Comments on: Ada Lovelace Day: Mary Shelley

By: Constantine Markides

Constantine Markides — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:08:08 +0000

It’s not only 19th century handwriting that’s bad. Have you ever seen Joyce’s drafts for Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake (although in all fairness, Wake isn’t much more legible in printed form)? As for the 21st century, we don’t know if handwriting is any better or worse than its 19th century counterpart since we don’t have any samples.

Great piece. I see you are about as frequent in posting as I am on my website. That’s what happens when you start tweeting.

By: Weekly Reader | William Patrick Wend

Weekly Reader | William Patrick Wend — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:13:34 +0000

[...] Amanda French’s creative use of Ada Lovelace Day to discuss Mary Shelley. I really like her argument that Shelley was the first science fiction novelist. [...]

By: Amanda French

Amanda French — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:41:15 +0000

Hee hee, arvind! Thing is, nothing I wrote is really about Mary Shelley per se. I really meant that I couldn’t add anything to the biography, doncha know. But I’m glad you smiled.

By: arvind

arvind — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:35:50 +0000

What a delightfully digressive rumination! I started smiling at the disclaimer about not adding much beyond what’s on the wikipedia page, and the smile persisted for the rest of the post.

By: Melissa White

Melissa White — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:57:12 +0000

It is crap, and I wish we could all just laugh such quacks off instead of actually having to take the time to disprove them.

What I should have said before: thanks for a great, smart post!

By: Amanda French

Amanda French — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:39:04 +0000

Sure, I’ll comment. Sounds like crap to me.

Mary herself, of course, wrote that Percy chivvied her to write more than she would have otherwise — she had planned a short story, but at his urging wrote a whole novel. I’m sure they talked it over and I’m sure he suggested things, maybe even sentences or structure or whole pages. Mary said that he wrote the Preface, so there’s that.

But in the common sense of the word “author,” and not counting postmodern arguments that authorship is a collaborative spectrum instead of an individual accomplishment, Mary is the author.

By: Melissa White

Melissa White — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:32:56 +0000

Creative take on the assignment, Ms. French! Would you care to comment on the NASSR-L contention that P.B. Shelley HAD to be the author of _F_? Great example of an argument that is all warrant, but despite its puniness generated plenty of discursive heat.