_Mathilda_ offers a good example of Mary Shelley’s methods of revision. A study of the manuscript shows that she was a careful workman, and that in polishing this bizarre story she strove consistently for greater credibility and realism, more dramatic (if sometimes melodramatic) presentation of events, better motivation, conciseness, and exclusion of purple passages. In the revision and rewriting, many additions were made, so that _Mathilda_ is appreciably longer than _The Fields of Fancy_. But the additions are usually improvements: a much fuller account of Mathilda’s father and mother and of their marriage, which makes of them something more than lay figures and to a great extent explains the tragedy; development of the character of the Steward, at first merely the servant who accompanies Mathilda in her search for her father, into the sympathetic confidant whose responses help to dramatise the situation; an added word or short phrase that marks Mary Shelley’s penetration into the motives and actions of both Mathilda and her father. Therefore _Mathilda_ does not impress the reader as being longer than _The Fields of Fancy_ because it better sustains his interest. And with all the additions there are also effective omissions of the obvious, of the tautological, of the artificially elaborate.[xviii] The finished draft, _Mathilda_, still shows Mary Shelley’s faults as a writer: verbosity, loose plotting, somewhat stereotyped and extravagant characterization. The reader must be tolerant of its heroine’s overwhelming lamentations. But she is, after all, in the great tradition of romantic heroines: she compares her own weeping to that of Boccaccio’s Ghismonda over the heart of Guiscardo. If the reader can accept Mathilda on her own terms, he will find not only biographical interest in her story but also intrinsic merits: a feeling for character and situation and phrasing that is often vigorous and precise. Footnotes: [i] They are listed in Nitchie, _Mary Shelley_, Appendix II, pp. 205-208. To them should be added an unfinished and unpublished novel, _Cecil_, in Lord Abinger’s collection. [ii] On the basis of the Bodleian notebook and some information about the complete story kindly furnished me by Miss R. Glynn Grylls, I wrote an article, “Mary Shelley’s _Mathilda_, an Unpublished Story and Its Biographical Significance,” which appeared in _Studies in Philology_, XL (1943), 447-462. When the other manuscripts became available, I was able to use them for my book, _Mary Shelley_, and to draw conclusions more certain and well-founded than the conjectures I had made ten years earlier.