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 A brief summary of the Life of Mary Shelley

29th March 1797 Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first feminists, and William Godwin, an influential writer and political journalist marry.
30th August 1797 Their daughter, Mary, is born. Her mother dies ten days later.
The future Mary Shelley will consequently grow up amongst her father’s intellectual friends.
28th July 1814 Mary elopes to the Continent with the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who is already married. They return to England in September.
February 1815 Their first child, a daughter, dies in Venice.
January 1816 Mary gives birth to a son, William.
May 1816 The family leaves England for Geneva, where they meet Lord Byron and take up residence near him at Montalègre.
June 1816 Mary begins writing Frankenstein.
December 1816 Percy Shelley’s wife, Harriet is found drowned. Percy and Mary marry in London.
May 1817 Frankenstein is completed.
September 1817 Mary gives birth to a daughter, Clara.
November 1817 History Of Six Weeks' Tour, a jointly authored work recording Mary and Percy’s travels in Europe is published.
January 1818 Frankenstein is published.
March 1818 The Shelleys leave England for Italy, where they will remain until Shelley's death. They visit Byron in Venice, but baby Clara dies during their stay there.
June 1819 Mary suffers a nervous breakdown after the death of her son William.
November 1819 Mary gives birth to a son, Percy Florence, in the Italian town of Florence. He will be the only one of her children to survive infancy.
October 1821 The Shelleys move to Pisa where they are neighbours to Lord Byron.
July 1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns in the Bay of Spezia near Livorno.
1823 Mary Shelley returns to London determined not to remarry.
Her romance novel set in 14th century, Valperga, is published in February. The second edition of Frankenstein is also published.
1826 The Last Man is published. This novel, set in the 21st century, tells the story of a lone survivor in a world wiped-out by plague.
1830 Publication of Mary’s fourth novel, Perkin Warbeck.
1835 Publication of Lodore.
1837 Faulkner, Mary’s last novel is published.
1839 Mary Shelley continues to write short stories for popular periodicals, particularly The Keepsake, as well as producing several volumes of Lives for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia.
She prepared the first authoritative edition of Shelley's poems (1839, 4 vols.).
1844 Rambles in Germany and Italy, a travel journal recounting her Continental tours with Percy Florence and his friends.
February 1851 Mary Shelley dies in London on 1st February, probably from a brain tumour.


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