Proserpine And Midas

Mary Shelley's Proserpine and Midas emerge here as small but striking windows into her imagination: graceful mythological dramas shaped by classical learning, personal grief, and the creative companionship of Percy Shelley. Written most likely in 1820 and surviving in Mary's hand as a fair copy with lyrical passages contributed by Percy, they belong to a rare period of renewal in Italy, when study, translation, and shared literary experiment briefly revived her powers. The introduction traces how these works connect the raw energy of Frankenstein to the quieter melancholy of her later writing, while also acknowledging the losses of Clara and William, which darkened her life and silenced her for a time. At the same time, the commentary places these dramas within a larger Romantic recovery of antiquity, contrasting them with the decorative, mock-heroic use of myth in earlier English poetry and showing how the Shelleys helped restore classical stories to living symbolic force. It even includes a daring essay fragment that treats Greek myth and Christianity as parallel revelations. In Proserpine itself, Ceres and her daughter share a tender farewell in Enna before the girl, with her nymph companions, turns to tales of gods, nymphs, and elemental wonders. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.