The next year Shelley, accompanied by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin, the speculative philosopher, and Claire Clairmont, a friend of the poet Lord Byron, visited Europe. In 1815 Shelley’s grandfather died, and the poet was assured of a regular income of $5,000 a year. In 1816 he visited Europe again, and in November of the same year his wife Harriet drowned herself. Shelley’s two children were committed to the care of their grandfather Westbrook.
Shelley married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and in 1818 they left England, never to return, going to Italy, where he wrote many of his greatest poems.
His second wife was a talented woman and a writer of ability. Under the name of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley she wrote that famous grewsome tale, “Frankenstein.”
In July, 1822, Shelley set sail in a small boat to return to his summer home at Spezia. The boat was overtaken by a sudden squall and disappeared. Two weeks later Shelley’s body was washed ashore with a copy of Keats’ poems open in one of his pockets. The Tuscan quarantine regulations at that time required that whatever came ashore from the sea should be burned. Accordingly Shelley’s body was placed on a pyre and reduced to ashes in the presence of Leigh Hunt, E. J. Trelawney, and Lord Byron. His ashes were collected and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near the grave of his friend Keats.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1. No. 44. SERIAL No. 44
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
