Valperga (novel)

Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of

Lucca is an 1823 historical novel by the Romantic novelist Mary
Shelley, set amongst the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines (the
latter of which she spelled "Ghibeline").

Contents
Publication details
Plot summary
Themes
Reception
Notes
Bibliography

Publication details
Title page from the second volume of
Mary Shelley's original title is now the subtitle; Valperga was
Valperga
selected by her father, William Godwin, who edited the work for
publication between 1821 and February 1823. His edits
emphasised the female protagonist and shortened the novel.[1]

Plot summary
Valperga is a historical novel which relates the adventures of the early fourteenth-century despot Castruccio
Castracani, a real historical figure who became the lord of Lucca and conquered Florence. In the novel, his
armies threaten the fictional fortress of Valperga, governed by Countess Euthanasia, the woman he loves.
He forces her to choose between her feelings for him and political liberty. She chooses the latter and sails
off to her death.

Themes
Through the perspective of medieval history, Mary Shelley addresses a live issue in post-Napoleonic
Europe: the right of autonomously governed communities to political liberty in the face of imperialistic
encroachment.[2] She opposes Castruccio's compulsive greed for conquest with an alternative, Euthanasia's
government of Valperga on the principles of reason and sensibility.[3] In the view of Valperga's recent
editor Stuart Curran, the work represents a feminist version of Walter Scott's new and often masculine
genre, historical novel.[4] Modern critics draw attention to Mary Shelley's republicanism, and her interest in
questions of political power and moral principles.[5]
Reception
Valperga earned largely positive reviews, but it was judged as a love story, its ideological and political
framework overlooked.[6] It was not, however, republished in Mary Shelley's lifetime, and she later
remarked that it never had "fair play".[7] Recently, Valperga has been praised for its sophisticated narrative
form and its authenticity of detail.[8] In 1824, a reviewer for Knight's Quarterly Review compared Valperga
and Frankenstein and alleged that each novel was written by a different author:

"[T]here is not the slightest trace of the same hand -- instead of the rapidity and enthusiastic
energy which hurries you forward in Frankenstein, every thing is cold, crude, inconsecutive,
and wearisome; -- not one flash of imagination, not one spark of passion -- opening it as I did,
with eager expectation, it must indeed have been bad for me after toiling a week to send the
book back without having finished the first volume. This induced me to read Frankenstein
again -- for I thought I must have been strangely mistaken in my original judgment. So far,
however, from this, a second reading has confirmed it. I think Frankenstein possesses extreme
power, and displays capabilities such as I did hope would have produced far different things
from Castruccio. ... But whence arises the extreme inferiority of Valperga? I can account for it
only by supposing that Shelley wrote the first, though it was attributed to his wife, -- and that
she really wrote the last. … It has much of his poetry and vigour … At all events, the
difference of the two books is very remarkable."

— [9]

Notes
1. Rossington, Introduction to Valperga, xv; Curran, 103.
2. Curran, 108-11.
3. Rossington, Introduction to Valperga, xii.
4. Curran, 106-07.
5. Bennett, An Introduction, 60.
6. Bennett, An Introduction, 60–61.
7. Rossington, Introduction to Valperga, xxiv.
8. Curran, 104-06. Mary Shelley, as Percy Shelley confirmed, "visited the scenery which she
described in person", and consulted many books about Castruccio and his times.
9. “Frankenstein’’, Knight's Quarterly Review, 3 (August, 1824), edited by Charles Knight: 195-
99. (http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Reviews/knights.html)

Bibliography
Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8018-5976-X.
Bennett, Betty T. "Machiavelli's and Mary Shelley's Castruccio: Biography as Metaphor.
Romanticism 3.2 (1997): 139–51.
Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical novels: Valperga and
Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Eds. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C.
Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978.
Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa
City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. ISBN 0-87745-397-7.
 Brewer, William D. "Mary Shelley's Valperga: The Triumph of Euthanasia's Mind". European
Romantic Review 5.2 (1995): 133–48.
Carson, James P. "'A Sigh of Many Hearts': History, Humanity, and Popular Culture in
Valperga". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein": Essays in Honor of
the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Eds. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and
Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown,
Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-811220-3.
Curran, Stuart. "Valperga". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Ed. Esther Schor.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-00770-4.
Lew, Joseph W. "God's Sister: History and Ideology in Valperga". The Other Mary Shelley:
Beyond Frankenstein. Eds. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New
York: New York University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507740-7.
O'Sullivan, Barbara Jane. "Beatrice in Valperga: A New Cassandra". The Other Mary
Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Eds. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor.
New York: New York University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507740-7.
Lokke, Kari. "'Children of Liberty': Idealist Historiography in Staël, Shelley, and Sand". PMLA
118.3 (2003): 502–20.
Lokke, Kari. "Sibylline Leaves: Mary Shelley's Valperga and the Legacy of Corinne".
Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature. Ed.
Gregory Maertz, Gregory. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.
Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of
Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1985. ISBN 0-226-67528-9.
Rajan, Rilottama. "Between Romance and History: Possibility and Contingency in Godwin,
Leibniz, and Mary Shelley's Valperga". Mary Shelley in Her Times. Eds. Betty T. Bennett and
Stuart Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Rossington, Michael. "Future Uncertain: The Republican Tradition and its Destiny in
Valperga". Mary Shelley in Her Times. Eds. Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Schiefelbein, Michael. "'The Lessons of True Religion': Mary Shelley's Tribute to
Catholicism in Valperga". Religion and Literature 30.2 (1998): 59–79.
Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed.
Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. ISBN 0-19-283289-1.
Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. The
Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley. Vol. 3. Ed. Nora Crook. London: Pickering and
Chatto, 1996.
Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8018-4218-2.
Wake, Ann M. Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary
Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after
"Frankenstein": Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Eds. Syndy M.
Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 1997.
White, Daniel E. "'The God Undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of
Desire". Romanticism on the Net 6 (Mary 1997).
Williams, John. "Translating Mary Shelly's Valperga into English: Historical Romance,
Biography or Gothic Fiction?". European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange, 1760–1960. Ed. Avril
Horner. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.

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