101 Books, Number 62

Favorite Books from Throughout My Life

62: The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,* 1980–88, ed. Betty Bennett (1935–2006)

I read these letters early on—

I’d only just begun

My Mary Shelley research life—

And still I am not done!

Professor Bennett—what a job

She did with these rare texts!

I gobbled each—nutritious food!—

Then moved on to the next.

The annotations—marvelous.

The insights keen and rare.

The more I read, the more I thought,

The more I came to care.

And soon a correspondence with

Professor Bennett I

Commenced. And she was such a help!

I was a lucky guy.

The Shelley World lost such a friend

When Betty passed away.

I miss her books—her email, too.

I long to hear her say

Yet one more thing about the life

Of Mary Shelley and

The others who composed her world

Who formed that magic land.

*Mary Shelley (1797–1851)