

In December 1816 Harriet Shelley apparently committed suicide by drowning in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London. In November 1814 his wife Harriet bore a son, and in February 1815 Mary gave birth to a child who died two weeks later. The couple was accompanied by Claire Clairmont, with whom Mary had developed a close relationship. Together, the three took a six-week tour through France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland.

In July 1814, when Mary ran away to Europe with Percy, she was pregnant. Percy, a devoted disciple of William Godwin, with whom he shared his philosophy, was a proponent of vegetarianism, non-violent action and free love. Despite that, he married twice.Īt the time, Percy Shelley fell in love with Mary, he was married to Harriet Westbrook. Mary’s affair with romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley started in 1814 when she was 16.

Richard Rothwell’s portrait of Mary Shelley was shown at the Royal Academy in 1840 – Wikimedia Godwin was responsible for a family of five children, none of whom had the same two parents, but all of whom had a mother called Mary.

The new couple soon became the parents of a son, William Godwin Jr. Very little is known about the life of Mary Jane Vial Clairmont before she met William Godwin and her past remains a mystery. She already had two of her own children, Claire and Charles. In 1801, four years after the death of Mary Wollstonecraft, Godwin married his neighbour, Mary Jane Vial Clairmont. Mary’s mother died a short time after she was born and she was raised, along with her half-sister, by her father. Mary’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who was three years older than her, was born after her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had an affair with an American businessman, author and diplomat, Gilbert Imlay, before she met Godwin. Her father, William Godwin was a journalist, novelist and anarchist philosopher. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. Mary Shelley (née Godwin) was born in London in 1797. Life was complicated for Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, and everybody else around her. Walk the streets of Geneva in Switzerland to discover the answer
