Biography of Mary Godwin aka Shelley 1797-1851

On 29th March 1797 [her father] William Godwin (age 41) and [her mother] Mary Wollstonecraft (age 37) were married probably because Mary Wollstonecraft was pregnant with Mary Godwin aka Shelley who was born five months later and who Mary Wollstonecraft wanted to be legitimate.

30th August 1797 Mary Godwin aka Shelley was born to William Godwin (age 41) and Mary Wollstonecraft (age 38).

On 10th September 1797 [her mother] Mary Wollstonecraft (age 38) died from childbirth eleven days after the birth of Mary Godwin aka Shelley.

On 21st December 1801 [her father] William Godwin (age 45) and [her step-mother] Mary Jane de Vial (age 33) were married. She was pregnant at the time; the second marriage of his precipitated by pregnancy. The child died young.

On 28th August 1811 [her future husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 19) and Harriet Westbrook were married at Edinburgh having eloped on the 25th August 1811.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. It was towards May 1814 that [her future husband] Shelley (age 21) first saw Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (age 16) as a grown-up girl (she was well on towards seventeen); he instantly fell in love with her, and she with him. Just before this, on the 24th of March, Shelley had remarried Harriet in London, apparently with a view to strengthening his position in his relations with his father as to the family property; but, on becoming enamoured of Mary, he seems to have rapidly made up his mind that Harriet should not stand in the way. She was at Bath while he was in London. They had, however, met again in London and come to some sort of understanding before the final crisis arrived-Harriet remonstrating and indignant, but incapable of effective resistance-Shelley sick of her companionship, and bent upon gratifying his own wishes, which as we have already seen were not at odds with his avowed principles of conduct. For some months past there had been bickering's and misunderstandings between him and Harriet, aggravated by the now detested presence of Miss Westbrook in the house; more than this cannot be said, and it seems dubious whether more will be hereafter known. Shelley, and not he alone, alleged grave misdoing on Harriet's part - perhaps mistakenly.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The upshot came on the 28th of July, when [her future husband] Shelley (age 21) aided Mary (age 16) [Mary Godwin aka Shelley] to elope from her father's house, Claire Clairmont (age 16) deciding to accompany them. They crossed to Calais, and proceeded across France into Switzerland. [her father] Godwin (age 58) and his [her mother] wife were greatly incensed. Though he and Mary Wollstonecraft had entertained and avowed bold opinions regarding the marriage-bond, similar to Shelley's own, and had in their time acted upon these opinions, it is not clearly made out that Mary Godwin had ever been encouraged by paternal influence to think or do the like. Shelley and she chose to act upon their own likings and responsibility - he disregarding any claim which Harriet had upon him, and Mary setting at nought her father's authority. Both were prepared to ignore the law of the land and the rules of society. The three young people returned to London in September.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1816. When she [Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 18)] was in Switzerland with [her future husband] Shelley (age 23) and Byron (age 27) in 1816 a proposal was made that various members of the party should write a romance or tale dealing with the supernatural. The result of this project was that Mrs Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Byron the beginning of a narrative about a vampyre, and Dr Polidori (age 20), Byron's physician, a tale named The Vampyre, the authorship of which used frequently in past years to be attributed to Byron himself.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. In May 1816 the pair [Bysshe Shelley 1st Baronet and Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 18)] left England for Switzerland, together with Miss Clairmont (age 18), and their own infant son William. They went straight to Sécheron, near Geneva; Byron (age 28), whose separation from his wife had just then taken place, arrived there immediately afterwards. A great deal of controversy has arisen as to the motives and incidents of this foreign sojourn. The clear fact is that Miss Clairmont, who had a fine voice and some inclination for the stage, had seen Byron, as connected with the management of Drury Lane theatre, early in the year, and an amorous intrigue had begun between them in London. Prima facie it seems quite reasonable to suppose that she had explained the facts to Shelley or to Mary, or to both, and had induced them to convoy her to the society of Byron abroad; were this finally established as the fact, it would show no inconsistency of conduct, or breach of his own code of sexual morals, on Shelley's part. On the other hand, documentary evidence exists showing that Mary was totally ignorant of the amour shortly before they went abroad. Whether or not they knew of it while they and Claire were in daily intercourse with Byron, and housed close by him on the shore of the Lake of Geneva, may be left unargued. The three returned to London in September 1816, Byron remaining abroad; and in January 1817 Miss Clairmont gave birth to his daughter named Allegra.

Around 18th August 1816 George "Lord Byron" 6th Baron Byron (age 28), [her future husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 24), his future wife Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 18), John William Polidori (age 20) were staying at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley 248. 248. To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (age 19)

(Bath) London, December 15 [16], 1816¹

I have spent a day, my beloved, of somewhat agonizing sensations, such as the contemplation of vice and folly and hard-heartedness, exceeding all conception, must produce. Leigh Hunt has been with me all day, and his delicate and tender attentions to me, his kind speeches of you, have sustained me against the weight of the horror of this event.

Note 1. Shelley returned to Bath on Dec. 14, from his visit to Leigh Hunt at Hampstead, and was much pleased with his new friend.

On the day following he received the terrible tidings of Harriet Shelley's suicide. After her separation from Shelley, Harriet had lived for some time at her father's house in Chapel Street. Mary writes in her diary in April, 1815, "We hear that Harriet has left her father's house," and shortly afterwards there is a record of two visits paid to her by Shelley. But in June, 1816, she addressed a letter to Mr. Newton from 23 Chapel Street, from which it would seem that she was still on good terms with her family. It has been stated that her father's door was shut against her by order of her sister. In November Shelley had applied to Thomas Hookham for news of Harriet, but in vain. Her last lodgings were at a house in Queen Street, Brompton, from which place she disappeared on Nov. 9th, and about a month later, on Dec. 15th, Hookham wrote to Shelley to say that her body had been taken out of the Serpentine on Dec. 10; that little information respecting her was laid before the jury at the coroner's inquest, and that her name had been given as that of Harriet Smith. He also mentioned that had she lived a little longer she would have given birth to a child. Shelley was deeply shocked at this awful calamity. Leigh Hunt, who was with him at this time, says "he never forgot it. For a time it tore his being to pieces." Shelley did not, however, regard himself as responsible for Harriet's tragic end. In writing to Southey some years later, he said: "I take God to witness, if such a Being is now regarding both you and me, and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence— that you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended." Although Shelley had parted from his wife, he had not only made ample provision for her and his children, but had kept in touch with her movements. On the day that he received the news from Hookham, he went to London to claim his two children; he could not, however, have arrived till the evening, so that this letter must have been dated 15th instead of 16th by mistake.

Click to read complete text ...

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. [[her husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 24)] The death of Harriet having removed the only obstacle to a marriage with Mary Godwin (age 19), the wedding ensued on the 30th of December 1816, and the married couple settled down at Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire.

Peacock's Memoirs of Shelley. On the 30th of December, 1816, [her husband] Shelley (age 24) married his second wife [Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 19)]; and early in the ensuing year they took possession of their house at Marlow. It was a house with many large rooms and extensive gardens. He took it on a lease for twenty-one years, furnished it handsomely, fitted up a library in a room large enough for a ball-room, and settled himself down, as he supposed, for life. This was an agreeable year to all of us. Mr. Hogg was a frequent visitor. We had a good deal of rowing and sailing, and we took long walks in all directions. He had other visitors from time to time. Amongst them were Mr. Godwin and Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Hunt. He led a much more social life than he had done at Bishopgate; but he held no intercourse with his immediate neighbours. He said to me more than once, 'I am not wretch enough to tolerate an acquaintance.'

30th December 1816 Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 24) and Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 19) were married.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. Their [[her husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 24) and Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 19)] tranquillity was shortly disturbed by a Chancery suit set in motion by Mr Westbrook, who asked for the custody of his two grandchildren, on the ground that Shelley had deserted his wife and intended to bring up his offspring in his own atheistic and anti-social opinions. Lord Chancellor Eldon (age 65) delivered judgment on the 27th of March 1817. He held that Shelley, having avowed condemnable principles of conduct, and having fashioned his own conduct to correspond, and being likely to inculcate the same principles upon his children, was unfit to have the charge of them. He appointed as their curator Dr Hume, an orthodox army physician, who was Shelley's own nominee. The poet had to pay for the maintenance of the children a sum which stood eventually at £120 per annum; if it was at first (as generally stated) £200, that was no more than what he had previously allowed to Harriet.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. Frankenstein, published in 1818, when Mrs Shelley (age 20) was at the utmost twenty-one years old, is a very remarkable performance for so young and inexperienced a writer; its main idea is that of the formation and vitalization, by a deep student of the secrets of nature, of an adult man, who, entering the world thus under unnatural conditions, becomes the terror of his species, a half-involuntary criminal, and finally an outcast whose sole resource is self-immolation. This romance was followed by others: Valperga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823), an historical tale written with a good deal of spirit, and readable enough even now; The Last Man (1826), a fiction of the final agonies of human society owing to the universal spread of a pestilence—this is written in a very stilted style, but possesses a particular interest because Adrian is a portrait of Shelley; The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830); Lodore (1835), also bearing partly upon Shelley's biography, and Falkner (1837). Besides these novels there was the Journal of a Six Weeks Tour (the tour of 1814 mentioned below), which is published in conjunction with Shelley's prose-writings; and Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840–1842–1843 (which shows an observant spirit, capable of making some true forecasts of the future), and various miscellaneous writings. After the death of Shelley, for whom she had a deep and even enthusiastic affection, marred at times by defects of temper, Mrs Shelley in the autumn of 1823 returned to London. At first the earnings of her pen were her only sustenance; but after a while Sir Timothy Shelley made her an allowance, which would have been withdrawn if she had persisted in a project of writing a full biography of her husband.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. In 1818 the Shelleys [[her husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 25) and Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 20)] - always nearly with Miss Clairmont (age 19) in their company - were in Milan, Leghorn, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and its neighbourhood, Rome, and Naples; in 1819 in Rome, the vicinity of Leghorn, and Florence (both their infants were now dead, but a third was born late in 1819, [her son] Percy Florence Shelly, who in 1844 inherited the baronetcy); in 1820 in Pisa the Bagni di Pisa (or di San Giuliano), and Leghorn; in 1821 in Pisa and with Byron in Ravenna; in 1822 in Pisa and on the Bay of Spezia, between Lerici and Sari Terenzio. The incidents of this period are but few, and of no great importance apart from their bearing upon the poet's writings. In Leghorn he knew Mr and Mrs Gisborne, the latter a once intimate friend of Godwin; she taught Shelley Spanish, and he was eager to promote a project for a steamer to be built by her son by a former marriage, the engineer Henry Reveley; it would have been the first steamer to navigate the Gulf of Lyons.

On 12th November 1819 [her son] Percy Florence Shelley 3rd Baronet was born to [her husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 27) and Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 22).

On 8th July 1822 [her husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley (age 29) drowned. He was returning on the Don Juan with Edward Williams from a meeting at Livorno with Leigh Hunt and Byron to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal. The boat was sunk is a storm. Shelley's badly decomposed body washed ashore at Viareggio ten days later and was identified by Trelawny from the clothing and a copy of Keats's Lamia in a jacket pocket. On 16th August 1822 his body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio and the ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome. The cremation was attended by George "Lord Byron" 6th Baron Byron (age 34). His wife Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 24) did not attend.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. In 1838 she [Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 40)] edited Shelley's works, supplying the notes that throw such invaluable light on the subject. She succeeded, by strenuous exertions, in maintaining her son Percy at Harrow and Cambridge; and she shared in the improvement of his fortune when in 1840 his grandfather acknowledged his responsibilities and in 1844 he succeeded to the baronetcy.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. She [Mary Godwin aka Shelley (age 53)] died on the 21st of February 1851. [Note. Some sources state 1st February 1851]

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911. SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1797–1851), English writer, only daughter of [her father] William Godwin and his wife [her mother] Mary Wollstonecraft, and second wife of the poet [her former husband] Percy Bysshe Shelley, was born in London on the 30th of August 1797. For the history of her girlhood and of her married life see Godwin, William, and Shelley, P. B.