Mary Shelley sent the finished Mathilda to her father in England, to submit for publication.[20] However, though Godwin admired aspects of the novella, he found the incest theme "disgusting and detestable" and failed to return the manuscript despite his daughter's repeated requests.[21] In the light of Percy Shelley's later death by drowning, Mary Shelley came to regard the novella as ominous; she wrote of herself and Jane Williams "driving (like Mathilda) towards the sea to learn if we were to be for ever doomed to misery".[22] The novella was published for the first time in 1959, edited by Elizabeth Nitchie from dispersed papers.[11] It has become possibly Mary Shelley's best-known work after Frankenstein.[23]
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