The novella "Mathilda", written by Mary Shelley in 1820, contains similarities to the myth and mentions Myrrha. Mathilda is left by her father as a baby after her birth causes the death of her mother, and she does not meet her father until he returns sixteen years later. Then he tells her that he is in love with her, and, when she refuses him, he commits suicide. In chapter 4, Mathilda makes a direct allusion: "I chanced to say that I thought "Myrrha" the best of Alfieri's tragedies." Audra Dibert Himes, in an essay entitled "Knew shame, and knew desire", notes a more subtle reference to Myrrha: Mathilda spends the last night before her father’s arrival in the woods, but as she returns home the next morning the trees seemingly attempt to encompass her. Himes suggests that the trees can be seen as a parallel to Ovid’s metamorphosed Myrrha.