The Elopement of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Poets involved
What happened
The radical Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley eloped to Europe with sixteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher William Godwin, while still married to Harriet Westbrook. Championing ideals of free love and radical political liberation, they traveled through France and Switzerland accompanied by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont. This defiance of conventional society led to ostracization, severe financial hardship, and the tragic drownings of both Harriet and Percy.
Literary impact
This extraordinary intellectual and romantic partnership yielded an explosion of landmark literature, most notably during the famous 1816 summer at Lake Geneva where Mary conceived her classic novel 'Frankenstein'. Shelley's deep love for Mary directly inspired his epic poetic masterworks like 'Prometheus Unbound' and 'Epipsychidion', which came to epitomize the visionary, uninhibited spirit of High Romanticism.
Source: Wikipedia
