A Female Lineage

Whilst to date there has been no single, systematic exploration of a Shelleyan presence in the work of the Brontës, nor a detailed study into the specifics of the siblings’ reading, I have considered some isolated critical references which associate them with the textual Shelleys and, by bringing these together with abundant original research into their likely reading narrative, shown the sisters’ engagement with the Percy and Mary Shelley has been more pervasive and significant than hitherto recognised. The Shelleys are a crucial textual presence within their family’s early writing, within which their appropriation of this Shelleyan narrative drove and shaped their communal writing. Crucially, in a male-dominated sphere, Mary potentially modelled for the sisters the possibility they too could become novelists.