Although Mary Shelley publishes this revision of her novel pseudonymously, as by "The
Author of The Last Man, Perkin Warbeck, &C. &C.," she writes as though she had signed
her full name to the title page, speaking familiarly of her husband toward the end
of the Introduction as "Shelley" (see I:Intro:7) and here casting her parents, William
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, as almost legendary, if historical, figures whom she
need not bother to name. Constrained to keep the Shelley name out of the press by
the meager allowance Sir Timothy Shelley had reluctantly settled upon his grandson,
and thus remaining, as her opening paragraph indicates, "very averse to bringing [her]self
forward in print" (see I:Intro:1), Mary Shelley nonetheless goes out of her way here
to establish her major credentials as an artist and her strong claim to public notice.
An appearance of modesty to cloak an unladylike presumption is a standard ploy of
women writers at this time.