The group entertained themselves one rainy day by reading a book of ghost stories. The following summer, the Shelleys were in Switzerland with Jane Clairmont, Lord Byron and John Polidori. Mary delivered a baby girl who only lived for a few days. They struggled financially and faced the loss of their first child in 1815. Mary and Percy traveled about Europe for a time. Mary's actions alienated her from her father who did not speak to her for some time. The couple was accompanied by Mary's stepsister Jane. He was still married to his first wife when he and the teenaged Mary fled England together that same year. Percy Shelley was a devoted student of her father, but he soon focused his attentions on Mary. In 1814, Mary began a relationship with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley returned to the Baxters' home the following year. There she experienced a type of domestic tranquility she had never known. Husbandĭuring the summer of 1812, Shelley went to Scotland to stay with an acquaintance of her father William Baxter and his family. According to The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, she once explained that "As a child, I scribbled and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.'" She published her first poem, "Mounseer Nongtongpaw," in 1807, through her father's company. Shelley also found a creative outlet in writing. She also liked to daydream, escaping from her often challenging home life into her imagination. Shelley could often be found reading, sometimes by her mother's grave. While she didn't have a formal education, she did make great use of her father's extensive library. The Godwin household had a number of distinguished guests during Shelley's childhood, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Her stepmother decided that her stepsister Jane (later Claire) should be sent away to school, but she saw no need to educate Shelley.
Shelley never got along with her stepmother.
Clairmont brought her own two children into the union, and she and Godwin later had a son together.
The family dynamics soon changed with Godwin's marriage to Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801. Imlay was Wollstonecraft's daughter from an affair she had with a soldier.
Her father William Godwin was left to care for Shelley and her older half-sister Fanny Imlay. Sadly for Shelley, she never really knew her mother who died shortly after her birth. She was the daughter of philosopher and political writer William Godwin and famed feminist Mary Wollstonecraft - the author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She wrote several other books, including Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), the autobiographical Lodore (1835) and the posthumously published Mathilde. Writer Mary Shelley published her most famous novel, Frankenstein, in 1818.
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