Mathilda (1959) is a posthumous novella by English writer and Romantic Mary Shelley. Written as a means of self-distraction following the deaths of her young children in Italy, Mathilda is a work haunted by tragic loss. Unpublished for over a century, its posthumous appearance helped cement Shelleys reputation as a leading Romantic, an artist unafraid of confronting such themes and taboos as incest and suicide in her work. Mathilda, named after its narrator, traces a young womans troubled life from birth to her premature deathbed. Following her mothers death during childbirth and her fathers subsequent abandonment, Mathilda is raised by her aunt in rural Loch Lomond, Scotland. A gifted reader and promising intellectual, she rises from her difficult circumstances to lead a relatively happy childhood. When, at the age of 16, her father reenters her life, the two reconnect and eventually move together to London. As she begins to receive suitors however, her fathers strange jealousy and irrational behavior conceal a terrible secret. When he reveals his incestuous desires to Mathild