Table of Contents:
  • "Beyond the(ir) domestic" : defining the kinship coterie
  • "Without a mother's care" : Mary Wollstonecraft and the cult of motherhood
  • "Expressions in my mother's letters" : responses to maternity in Mary Shelley's early fiction
  • "Cruelty beyond compare" : maternal absence and deprivation in Mary Shelley's Lodore and Falkner
  • "My unhappy life" : the letters of Fanny Imlay
  • "In misery she spend her life" : Claire Clairmont and the kinship coterie
  • "Let me hear every Saturday from you" : a coda to Claire Clairmont's participation in the kinship coterie
  • "I am constantly thinking of you-- " : Maria Gisborne as surrogate to Mary Shelley
  • "Our own domestic circle" : the Brontës and their art
  • Conclusion : "Be explicit when you write" : concluding the kinship coterie.