A Hermit at Marlow

Abstract

AT the end of August, 1816, Shelley’s party left Geneva to return to England. They lived first at Bath, where Claire’s pregnancy with Byron’s child could be kept from their London acquaintances, with Shelley visiting London to complete financial arrangements with his father. On the night of October 9, Fanny Imlay (daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft by Gilbert Imlay before she had married Godwin) committed suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum in a hotel room in Swansea, Wales. Fanny’s letters to Shelley and Mary during their sojourn in Switzerland and afterward show that she was driven to despair by her feeling of complete financial dependence on Godwin, whom she knew to be deeply in debt.¹ The sorrow of this tragedy was somewhat lifted for Shelley when, on a visit to London early in December, he first met Leigh Hunt and Horace Smith, two men who were to become his close, dependable friends. On his return to Bath, however, he received a letter from Hookham informing him of Harriet Shelley’s suicide.