Mary Shelley’s Life 1797: Mary Shelley is born. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, dies from an infection 11 days later. • 1812: Mary goes to Dundee, Scotland to live with the family of William Baxter, a friend of William Godwin. • Nov. 11--Mary possibly first meets Percy Shelley on a brief visit home. He's married to his first wife, Harriet Westbrook Shelley. (Shelley had come to meet William Godwin, his idol). • 1814: Mary returns home to London, meets Percy Shelley for 2nd time in May. • July 28, 1814--Mary and Percy "elope" to France. • Jane/Claire Clairmont accompanies them. • They travel through France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland for 6 weeks. • Mary not quite 17, is already barely pregnant. • Harriet Shelley is pregnant as well. • William Godwin refuses to Jane “Claire” Clairmont communicate with Mary for next 2 1/2 years. • Nov. 30--Charles Shelley born to Harriet and Percy, their second child. • Possible affair between Percy and Jane/Claire during fall/winter 1814-1815 • 1815: Feb. 22--Mary gives birth to premature female child who dies March 6. Writes in her journal: "Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. Not in good spirits." • 1816: Son William born to Mary and Percy on January 24. • April, 1816--Claire Clairmont becomes Lord Byron's mistress. Mary meets Byron in London. • May, 1816--Mary, Percy, and pregnant Claire travel to Italy so Claire can pursue Byron. June, 1816
• Mary, Percy, and Claire spend summer of Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Byron as neighbor. • Story competition. 1816, cont.
Hyde Park
• Oct. 9--Fanny Imlay, Mary's half sister, commits suicide. Godwin refuses to i.d. body. • Dec. 10--Body of Harriet Shelley (pregnant, but not by Shelley) found drowned in Hyde Park. • Dec 30--Mary and Percy marry. 1817
• Jan. 12--Claire gives birth to Allegra, her daughter by Byron. • March--Percy Shelly denied custody of 2 children by first wife.
Allegra Byron 1817, cont.
• May--Mary completes Frankenstein. • Aug. 22--Percy arranges for publication of Frankenstein. • Sept. 2--Clara Shelley born. • Nov--History of a Six Week's Tour published anonymously. (Mary and Percy's account of their honeymoon travels). 1818
• Jan. 1-- Frankenstein published in three volumes (anonymously). 1818, cont.
• September--Clara Shelley dies. • Dec.--Infant, registered on 27 Feb, 1819 as ”Elena Adelaide," is born in Naples. Percy and "Marina Padurin" are listed as the parents. Identity of child still a mystery today. Percy's illegitimate daughter? A daughter the Shelleys planned to adopt to replace loss of Clara? 1819
• June 7--William Shelley dies in Rome (3 years old--model for William Frankenstein in the novel?) • Nov. 12--birth of only child to survive (Percy Florence Shelley). 1820
• Former servant attempts to blackmail the Shelleys over the mysterious Naples child. • June 10--Elena Adelaide dies. 1822
• April 19--Allegra Byron dies from typhus in a convent school. • June 16--Mary suffers miscarriage of fifth child, almost dies. 1822, cont.
• July--Percy drowns in boating accident on Gulf of Spezia off Italy. His body burned in a pyre on the beach. Later Life
• Mary continued to write after Shelley's death, producing five more novels, essays, tales, travel sketches, biographies, notes to Shelley's poems. (Though no later work lived up to Frankenstein).