MARY SHELLEY is to be commemorated by a blue English Heritage plaque on the London house where she died — an honour proposed in 1975 but resisted by the vicar who then lived there. He objected to the words “author of _Frankenstein_”, presumably for fear of crowds of peasants with torches, and felt that “author(ess) and wife of the poet'” would suffice.
from this month’s Ansible is Dave Langford’s wonderful British sf/fan newsletter
I have some sympathy with the vicar, because we lived for years in the Princeton house once owned by Albert Einstein. Einstein was adamant he didn’t want the house to be a museum–and it wasn’t–which didn’t stop tourists from ringing the front doorbell.
The most persistent in wanting to come in anyway were the Germans. In less charitable moments, I thought about pointing out that Einstein would happily have grown old in Germany if their ancestors hadn’t pitched him out on his ear.
I never thought of the English vicar’s solution–“Here lived an author, the husband to two Mrs. Einsteins.”
1 response so far ↓
1 Elayne Riggs // Oct 3, 2003 at 11:11 am
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing that kind of plaque if the honoree was male, but when it’s a woman it sounds like a real slap in the face to subsume her identity in favor of her husband’s.