Love and Fury: An Interview with Samantha Silva

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Join Folio librarian Lillian Dabney for a conversation with author Samantha Silva about her richly imagined, heart-wrenching historical novel about pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft: Love and Fury.

Oh, little bird! Another girl, in this world!

These are the first words Mary Wollstonecraft utters to her unnamed newborn after a difficult labor at the end of August, 1797. Those first days they spend together might also be their last, so Mary begins to tell her daughter the story of her life. From defying her own father so that she could educate herself to making a blood pact to never submit to the tyranny of marriage, Mary met the world with equal parts love and fury, refusing to accept a life of traditional womanhood.

Over the course of eleven days, attended by midwife Mrs.Blenkinsop and new father Mr. Godwin, mother and daughter must fight for their lives. Even as her own energy wanes, Mary weaves a riveting tale of loss and triumph, of pushing for a better future for girls in this world, passing along her legacy to her daughter, and to us.

Just as Silva breathed life into the character of Charles Dickens in her beloved debut Mr. Dickens and His Carol, praised everywhere from The New York Times to USA Today to The Chicago Tribune, here she makes flesh and blood of the legacy of the first feminist. Wollstonecraft is known for her widely read essay “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” and for her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's famous novel, Frankenstein, but in Silva's historical imagining, Mary has a face all her own.

About the Author:

Samantha Silva is the author of the novels Love and Fury and Mr. Dickens and His Carol, and is a screenwriter who has sold projects to Paramount, Universal, TNT, and New Line Cinema. She lives in Boise, Idaho.