Scope and arrangement
The Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material in the Pforzheimer Collection consists of writings, correspondence, and transcripts. The writings include drafts of poems ("The Choice" and "To the Dead") and several short stories ("The Sisters of Albano", "The Dream", "Transformation", and others). The bulk of the correspondence dates from between 1822-1849. Correspondents include Claire Clairmont, her stepsister; Leigh Hunt, the journalist and critic; Lord Byron's last mistress, the Countess Teresa Guiccioli; Edward Moxon, the publisher and poet; and over seventy-five others. The transcripts are chiefly comprised of her handwritten copies of letters originally by her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Manuscripts published in Betty T. Bennett's Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; in supplements to Bennett from The Keats-Shelley Journal; in Frederick L. Jones's Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley; or in Shelley and his Circle are noted with reference.
The Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material is arranged in four series: