A Horror Tale

Mary’s suicidal mother died a month after she was born, leaving her father (a political philosopher) to provide informal but liberal home education. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbour with whom Mary had a troubled relationship.

Aged 17 Mary began a romance with one of her father's political followers, a poet who was already married. That year Mary and her poet boyfriend left for France and travelled through Europe. When they returned to England, Mary was pregnant. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married after the suicide in the Serpentine of the poet’s first wife who was pregnant (with his child?).

Aged 19 the couple and Mary’s step sister spent a summer with the literary enfant terrible of the day near Switzerland where both sisters had an affair with their host. It was here Mary had a brilliant creative idea that all of us know.

The couple left Britain again for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary gave birth to her last and only surviving child, four years later her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm. Mary was 25 years old.

The idea was the novel was Frankenstein, Mary was Mary Shelley, her husband was Percy Bysse Shelley and her affair was with Lord Byron.

Aged 26 Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author.

In 1839 she moved for a year to Layton House in Putney which stood on land just behind the Putney Hotel. Here she prepared texts and biographical notes for a collection of Shelley’s work. She said Layton House was “hideous on the outside but comfortable and perfectly habitable”.

We will meet Mary’s even more radical mother in Walk 2 of Walks on the Wild Side. But for now head toward the Putney train station and conclude your walk.