It would be difficult to feel anything other than admiration and sympathy for Mary Shelley, as she faced a series of cruel blows during her childhood and early adulthood.

She was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, in London in 1797, to the radical feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher William Godwin. Her mother died soon afterwards; her father found another partner, and young Mary was brought up with stepsiblings and with Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Fanny Imlay. She read voraciously, learned five languages, and was used to meeting her father’s literary friends, including William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb and Coleridge.

In 1807 the family moved to Holborn, where Mary could hear the screams of animals being slaughtered in the candlelit abattoirs under Smithfield. As she suffered from poor health, she was sent away for long periods to recuperate. During one memorable journey she hid her money carefully in her stays for safety; nevertheless it was stolen from her! From the age of thirteen she had terrible eczema, possibly triggered by her poor relationship with her stepmother.

The poet Percy Shelley was already married when he became involved with Mary. They began to meet secretly by Wollstonecraft’s grave. In 1814 Shelley left his pregnant wife to elope with Mary, who was also expecting a baby. They took with them her stepsister, Jane (later Claire) Clairmont, and this scandalous triangular relationship lasted for eight years as they moved between England, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. Mary’s first published work, the co-authored text History of a Six Weeks Tour (published 1817), described some of their travels.

In February 1815 Mary gave birth to Clara, who lived for only twelve days. Her journal shows that she was haunted by the sense that the death might have been prevented. A son, William, was born in January 1816, and Shelley took Mary, Claire and the baby to Geneva. Here, Byron proposed that they should write ghost stories. Mary’s effort, Frankenstein, was penned at a time when scientists were investigating the possibility of using electrical power to regenerate corpses. Her novel concerned Victor Frankenstein’s attempt to re-animate a dead body, and the dreadful consequences of his actions.

Her own life was fast becoming a nightmare: Fanny Imlay committed suicide; Shelley’s wife drowned herself in the Serpentine; Mary and Shelley married and had a third baby, another Clara, in 1817, but she died the following year. Their grief was compounded when their precious William died of malaria in 1819. In his jotting book Percy wrote:

My dearest M. wherefore hast thou gone
And left me in this dreary world alone,
Thy form is here indeed – a lovely one –
But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,
That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode…
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee
Do thou return for mine.

Thankfully their fourth child survived into adulthood: he was called Percy Florence – no prizes for guessing where he was born!

Percy Shelley drowned in 1822, following a visit to Byron and Leigh Hunt. His body was cremated, with onlookers trying to snatch keepsakes from the flames. Byron wanted the skull, but it disintegrated. Mary salvaged what was left of Shelley’s heart: after her own death it was discovered, wrapped in silk, between the pages of Adonis, having lain for almost thirty years in her travelling-desk. In her journal Mary sometimes addressed Shelley: ‘What were I if I did not believe that you still existed?’ (October 1822); and in November she wrote: ‘So may it be said of me that I am nothing, but I was something and still I cling to what I was.’

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Content last updated: 07/10/2004

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