Escape and Elopement

Juliet Aubrey and Ellie Kendrick read Charlotte Gordon's extraordinary biography of the pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and her novelist daughter, Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein.

Mary Wollstonecraft, famous for her polemic A Vindication on the Rights of Woman, died ten days after giving birth to her daughter who wrote one of the nineteenth century's most significant novels, Frankenstein. Though she never knew her mother, Mary Shelley was inspired and influenced by the way Wollstonecraft had lived her life, and her philosophy on freedom. Charlotte Gordon's dual biography brings together these visionary women and illuminates the many similarities between the two. Both acquired fame and notoriety through their writing, they married difficult men, had children out of wedlock and were assailed by tragedy. Above all both left legacies that continue to endure.

Read by Juliet Aubrey and Ellie Kendrick
Abridged by Sara Davies
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.