SOURCE: “Trelawny and the Decay of Lying,” Review, Vol. 1, 1979, pp. 275-94.

In the following excerpt, Reiman contrasts two biographies of Trelawny and concludes that his work should neither be accepted as factual nor dismissed due to its interweaving of fantasy and reality, but rather read for its literary merits as “autobiographical fiction.”

“My life,” wrote Edward John Trelawny to Mary Shelley on 19 January 1831, “though I have sent it to you, as the dearest friend I have, is not written for the amusement of women; it is not a novel. If you begin clipping the wings of my true story, if you begin erasing words, you must then omit sentences, then chapters; it will be pruning an Indian jungle down to a clipped French garden.” But, like the realistic author he was, seeking “£200 per volume” or not “under any circumstances … less than £500 [for] the three volumes,” Trelawny in the...