ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin) met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812 and ran off with him to France in July 1814. The couple were married in 1816 after his first wife committed suicide.

Detailed explanation-2: -At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife.

Detailed explanation-3: -These years were also marred by tragedy. In September 1818 their daughter Clara contracted dysentery and died in Venice, where they had gone to find medical attention.

Detailed explanation-4: -The creation story of Mary Shelley’s dark tale of science misused is nearly as famous as the novel itself. The summer of 1816 became known as ‘the year without a summer’ due to the cold, dismal, damp conditions and torrential rain experienced throughout Europe, North America and Asia.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio.