Shelley was married to Harriet Westbrook with a young daughter and expecting. Percy and Mary Shelley soon fell in love and started meeting in secrecy at her mother’s grave and when William discovered, without success, he tried to discontinue the relationship. The couple elopes to France with Mary’s step sister, Claire Clairmont, and only returned when they ran into financial problems. Upon their return, Mary Shelley was pregnant and her father refused any assistance towards Mary and Percy. In February of 1815, daughter Clara Shelley was born two months prematurely, only to die a few weeks after birth. The following year, 1816, their son William Shelley is born in January. Percy was constantly leaving home, escaping from creditors and also at the time Harriet, Percy’s wife, gave birth to their son and Percy seemed to want Mary Shelley to have an affair with others. They left to Geneva with step sister Claire in 1816, to spend the summer with Lord Byron, who was Claire’s paramour at the time. The bad weather confined them to the house and they spend much of their time reading ghost stories which prompted Mary to write the first sketch of what was to become her most famous novel Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, starting the genre we know today as science
Shelley was married to Harriet Westbrook with a young daughter and expecting. Percy and Mary Shelley soon fell in love and started meeting in secrecy at her mother’s grave and when William discovered, without success, he tried to discontinue the relationship. The couple elopes to France with Mary’s step sister, Claire Clairmont, and only returned when they ran into financial problems. Upon their return, Mary Shelley was pregnant and her father refused any assistance towards Mary and Percy. In February of 1815, daughter Clara Shelley was born two months prematurely, only to die a few weeks after birth. The following year, 1816, their son William Shelley is born in January. Percy was constantly leaving home, escaping from creditors and also at the time Harriet, Percy’s wife, gave birth to their son and Percy seemed to want Mary Shelley to have an affair with others. They left to Geneva with step sister Claire in 1816, to spend the summer with Lord Byron, who was Claire’s paramour at the time. The bad weather confined them to the house and they spend much of their time reading ghost stories which prompted Mary to write the first sketch of what was to become her most famous novel Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, starting the genre we know today as science