Voices of the past brings to you one of the greatest True love stories in history. It is intertwined in the professional success and personal tragedy surrounding Mary Godwin Shelley and Percy Shelley’s Aldulterous Affair.
While we all love to indulge in a juicy love story from time to time, this one provides a bit more than that, all from our history.
Mary Godwin, only a teenager, daughter of the famous proto-feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, eloped with A VERY MARRIED PEOT, Perscy Shelly. They left England to escape all the scandal, traveling Europ together.
Percy Shelly’s PREGNANT wife, devastated that her husband abandoned her, committed suicide in 1816. Percy and Mary had no regard for Harriet, Percy’s wife, and they married. Not that it mattered to Mary, she had already been calling herself, “Mrs. Shelly” before the title had become vacant.
With such a scandalous beginning, fate would be delivered to Percy and Mary Shelly through success and tragedy. Their union had scandalized England causing them to live abroad for the rest of their lives. They had multiple children, but only one would survive to adulthood.
Percy’s progressive politics and unique style would negatively affect his career while Mary would find success with her groundbreaking nove, Fankenstein….
Six years after marrying, in 1822, Percy will drown in a boating accident in Italy. A devastated Mary, along with her son, would return back to England, and forge a successful literary career for almost thirty years before she died in 1851.
INTERESTING FACT: It is said that Mary Shelley kept her dead husband’s heart in her desk for 30 years.
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