Mary Shelley 
The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck 
Historical Novel

The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck tell the life story of Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the English throne, who claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury, the second son of Edward IV and one of the so-called ‘princes in the tower’. After the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, with the aid of John de la Poole, Richard, Duke of York hides with Mynheer Jahn Warbeck, a Flemish moneylender who had previously housed him and pretended that Richard was his deceased son, Perkin Warbeck. Under the alias of Perkin, Richard starts paving his way to English throne.

Circa l’autore

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley’s works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and Enlightenment political theories.