Percy Bysshe Shelley

These literary young lords and ladies were passing time one gloomy weekend in the summer of 1816 by creating and sharing scary stories. Mary claimed that the first night of their stay she had a nightmare. In this dream she saw a horrible creature at her window. The vision frightened her so much that she awoke and sleep was gone for good. She told her story to the group the next evening and Percy encouraged her to write it down. Thus was born Frankenstein and his Creature, and if you read the book, you will see how Percy Shelley contributed much of his own style, philosophy of the sublime, and autobiographical details.

The couple, giddy with love, naturally chose precisely Paris in July of 1814 as the destination for their elopment. Maybe they hadn't been reading the headlines? The Allies against Napoleonic imperialism had captured Paris. Napoleon, his back to the wall, was deposed (pulled off the throne) and then forced to abdicate (give up all claim of sovereign power) and, finally, to get the hell outta Dodge. Louis XVIII was proclaimed King, and everything was hectic, what with France being war-ravaged and all. So... Percy and his party, consisting of his girlfriend Mary Godwin, Mary's step-sister, Mary Jane (later "Claire") Clairmont, who yearned with obsessive desire for Lord Byron, decided that Paris didn't look good, just this week, to relax and stroll and eat crepes in outdoor bistros without a care. They packed quickly for Switzerland, but visited there only a few weeks before returning to England. The "Frankenstein Weekend" party still lay in the future.

Children by Harriet: Elizabeth Ianthe Shelley, born June 23 1813, and Charles Shelley, born November 30 1814. His only living descendants stem from Ianthe, who married and had seven children.

In October of 1812, Percy met William Godwin, the father of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; he and the old man got on well, since Percy flattered Godwin's rhetoric in Godwin's publications reasoning that marriage is a travesty and that love should be free. Percy already had a wife, but encountering the charms of the lovely teenager Mary made him agree with Godwin's philosophy. Godwin was not pleased to discover that his prescriptions for the betterment of England were to take place at once, here, in his own home -- had in fact led to Percy and Mary deciding to elope. If Percy's ex-wife wanted to live in a bigamist home, that was her foolish business, but Godwin did not intend his own beautiful, bright darling girl to become ensnared by a man - a poet! - who believed in love and parties more than he believed in responsibility.

Around February of 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg wrote a treatise called "The Necessity of Atheism" and passed it to friends and other students of University College (in Oxford) to read. On 25 March 1811, Shelley and Hogg were expelled from school for refusing to answer questions about who had written it, though we may assume they were really expelled for their atheistic beliefs.

Bysshe Shelley, Percy's grandfather, was created Sir Bysshe Shelley, baronet, in 1806, when Percy was 14 years old.