notes. She was in general a fairly good speller, but certain words,
especially those in which there was a question of doubling or not
doubling a letter, gave her trouble: untill (though occasionally she
deleted the final _l_ or wrote the word correctly), agreable, occured,
confering, buble, meaness, receeded, as well as hopless, lonly,
seperate, extactic, sacrifise, desart, and words ending in -ance or
-ence. These and other mispellings (even those of proper names) are
reproduced without change or comment. The use of _sic_ and of square
brackets is reserved to indicate evident slips of the pen, obviously
incorrect, unclear, or incomplete phrasing and punctuation, and my
conjectures in emending them.

I am very grateful to the library of Duke University and to its
librarian, Dr. Benjamin E. Powell, not only for permission to
transcribe and publish this work by Mary Shelley but also for the many
courtesies shown to me when they welcomed me as a visiting scholar in
1956. To Lord Abinger also my thanks are due for adding his approval
of my undertaking, and to the Curators of the Bodleian Library for
permiting me to use and to quote from the papers in the reserved
Shelley Collection. Other libraries and individuals helped me while I
was editing _Mathilda_: the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore,
whose Literature and Reference Departments went to endless trouble for
me; the Julia Rogers Library of Goucher College and its staff; the
library of the University of Pennsylvania; Miss R. Glynn Grylls (Lady
Mander); Professor Lewis Patton of Duke University; Professor
Frederick L. Jones of the University of Pennsylvania; and many other
persons who did me favors that seemed to them small but that to me
were very great.

I owe much also to previous books by and about the Shelleys. Those to