1797-1851
Shelley
was in many ways a product of her birth and environment. Her father was William
Godwin,
a leading political and moral radical in England. Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft,
the first great English feminist, author of A
Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). Her mother died of puerperal fever 11 days after Mary's birth.
Key Dates:
- 1801: Her father
marries Mary Jane Clairmont.
- 1812: Mary meets
the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and
his wife Harriet Westbrook.
- 1814: Mary and Shelley, accompanied by Mary's stepsister Claire
Clairmont, elope.
- 1815: Mary's premature daughter dies.
- 1816:
On January 24, a son, William, is born.
On December 10, Harriet Shelley drowns.
On December 30, Mary and Shelley wed.
- 1817: A daughter, Clara, is born
- 1818:
On March 11 Frankenstein is
published.
Clara dies on September 24.
- 1819:
Son William dies on June 7.
Son Percy, the only child to survive, is born on November 12.
- 1822: On July 8, Percy Shelley drowns.
- 1826: Mary publishes The Last Man,
a novel of the future in which a worldwide plague wipes out all but one
man.
- 1839: Mary's editions of Shelley's poetry and prose are published.
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