The Mary Shelley Opera - Biography of Mary Shelley

Biography of Mary Shelley, continued

Percy Shelley
Percy Shelley
In the spring of 1814 , Percy Shelley, recently separated from his wife, Harriet, came calling on William Godwin, whose work he had always admired. Shelley was completely enchanted by the beautiful, intellectually fierce young woman who was the great philosopher's daughter. They began meeting clandestinely near St. Pancras church, where her parents had married and her mother was buried. After six weeks of impassioned meetings, they eloped to Europe, bringing alone Mary's stepsister, Clare, who also long to escape the strictures of her mother's household.

Mary Shelley

For the next several years, Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin divided their time between Europe and England. Money was always a problem for Shelley; as the son of a lord, he lived on his expectations, borrowing against his inheritance. He was at this time supporting two households; his wife Harriet remained in England with their children while he traveled with Mary and Clare.

On one of their visits to England, Clare engaged the attentions of Lord Byron, and persuaded Percy and Mary to settle near him in Switzerland in the summer of 1818. During this rainy summer, the bored vacation party amused themselves as best they could, with a selection of the gothic books popular in the period and old newspapers. One day, Lord Byron proposed a dare: they should each write a tale of horror, with the most terrifying to win. They accepted; and in that dare lay the genesis of Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus.

Travels in Europe map by Claudia Carlson

Mary and Percy returned to England that fall with their infant son William (their first child, Clara, had died shortly after she was born.) While they were in London, Harriet Shelley, pregnant with the child of an unknown lover, threw herself in the Thames and drowned. Mary married Percy Shelley shortly thereafter; they hoped that the courts would allow him custody of his children if he established a respectable household. The attempt failed; the court sent the children off to caretakers in the country. Although the return to England did not bring the results she had hoped for, they remained in the country for two years while Mary completed Frankenstein in the spring of 1817, and that fall, her daughter Clara Everina was born. In the fall, a European travel book Mary and Percy had written together, History of a Six Weeks Tour, was published anonymously. Mary and Percy Shelley returned to Italy.

Lord Byron

The Shelley household made friends with English people abroad, joining an expatriate community that traveled from place to place in Europe, in search of beautiful and cheap surroundings. Clare bore Lord Byron a daughter, Allegra, who became part of the Shelley household, though Byron soon tired of Clare. Mary wrote steadily. Frankenstein, published in 1818, anonymously at first, was a success, reaping both critical and popular acclaim. Percy Shelley's poems were published infrequently during his lifetime, though greatly admired by his circle and those who read them.