it is Mathilda, rather than her father, who wields control over the novel's gothic script." This potentially allows for Mathilda to be viewed as a positive role model in nineteenth-century literature as she overcomes paternal authority and refuses to conform to commonly accepted practices regarding female characters in literature of the time. This redefinition occurs in various ways: Mathilda's refusal to name her father, her voice being the primary source of information provided to readers, and a lack of the novella ending in marriage which was the typical motif for female gothic literature. Publication Mary Shelley sent the finished Mathilda to her father in England, to submit for publication. However, though Godwin admired aspects of the novella, he found the incest theme "disgusting and detestable" and failed to return the manuscript despite his daughter's repeated requests. In the light of Percy Shelley's later death by drowning, Mary Shelley came to regard the novella as ominous; she wrote of herself and Jane Williams "driving (like Mathilda) towards the sea to learn if we were to be for ever doomed to misery". The novella was published for the first time in 1959, edited by Elizabeth Nitchie from dispersed papers. It has become possibly Mary Shelley's best-known work after Frankenstein. Footnotes Bibliography Allen, Graham. "Beyond Biographism: Mary Shelley's Matilda, Intertextuality, and the Wandering Subject". Romanticism 3.2 (1997): 170–84. Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. "Mary Shelley's letters: the public/private self." The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Ed. Esther Schor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bunnell, Charlene. "Mathilda: Mary Shelley's Romantic Tragedy". Keats-Shelley Journal 46 (1997): 75–96. Chatterjee, Ranita. "Filian Ties: Goldwin's Deloraine and Mary Shelley's Writings". European Romantic Review 18.1 (2007): 29–41. Taylor & Frances Online Chatterjee, Ranita. "Mathilda: Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and the Ideologies of Incest". 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. "Frankenstein, Matilda, and the legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft." The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Ed. Esther Schor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T.