Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca is an 1823 historical novel by the Romantic novelist Mary Shelley, set amongst the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines (the latter of which she spelt "Ghibeline").

Publication details

Mary Shelley's original title is now the subtitle; Valperga was selected by her father, William Godwin, who edited the work for publication between 1821 and February 1823. His edits emphasised the female protagonist and shortened the novel.

Plot summary

Valperga is a historical novel which relates the adventures of the early fourteenth-century despot Castruccio Castracani, a real historical figure who became the lord of Lucca and conquered Florence. In the novel, his armies threaten the fictional fortress of Valperga, governed by Countess Euthanasia, the woman he loves. He forces her to choose between her feelings for him and political liberty. She chooses the latter and sails off to her death.

Themes

Through the perspective of medieval history, Mary Shelley addresses a live issue in post-Napoleonic Europe: the right of autonomously governed communities to political liberty in the face of imperialistic encroachment. She opposes Castruccio's compulsive greed for conquest with an alternative, Euthanasia's government of Valperga on the principles of reason and sensibility. In the view of Valperga's recent editor Stuart Curran, the work represents a feminist version of Walter Scott's new and often masculine genre, historical novel. Modern critics draw attention to Mary Shelley's republicanism, and her interest in questions of political power and moral principles.

Reception

Valperga earned largely positive reviews, but it was judged as a love story, its ideological and political framework overlooked. It was not, however, republished in Mary Shelley's lifetime, and she later remarked that it never had "fair play". Recently, Valperga has been praised for its sophisticated narrative form and its authenticity of detail. In 1824, a reviewer for Knight's Quarterly Review compared Valperga and Frankenstein and alleged that each novel was written by a different author: "'[T]here is not the slightest trace of the same hand – instead of the rapidity and enthusiastic energy which hurries you forward in Frankenstein, everything is cold, crude, inconsecutive, and wearisome; – not one flash of imagination, not one spark of passion – opening it as I did, with eager expectation, it must indeed have been bad for me after toiling a week to send the book back without having finished the first volume. This induced me to read Frankenstein again – for I thought I must have been strangely mistaken in my original judgment. So far, however, from this, a second reading has confirmed it. I think Frankenstein possesses extreme power, and displays capabilities such as I did hope would have produced far different things from Castruccio. … But whence arises the extreme inferiority of Valperga? I can account for it only by supposing that Shelley wrote the first, though it was attributed to his wife, – and that she really wrote the last. … It has much of his poetry and vigour … At all events, the difference of the two books is very remarkable.'"