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Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, [160] and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. [161] Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. [162]
Commentators have often read the text as autobiographical, with the three central characters standing for Mary Shelley, William Godwin (her father), and Percy Shelley (her husband). [10] There is no firm evidence, however, that the storyline itself is autobiographical. [11]
However, Godwin withdrew his support as Mary became a woman and pursued her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. [65] Mary's first two novels, Frankenstein and Mathilda, may be seen as a reaction to her childhood. Both explore the role of the father in the child's socialisation and the control the father has on the child's future. [66]
Shelley had considered the idea of a reawakened historical figure as the basis for a tragic story some years earlier, with the unfinished Valerius, about a citizen of the Roman Republic awakened in the nineteenth century. Her father had likewise drawn on the legend of the Seven Sleepers in Mandeville.
Mary Shelley's original title is now the subtitle; Valperga was selected by her father, William Godwin, who edited the work for publication between 1821 and February 1823. His edits emphasised the female protagonist and shortened the novel.
Presumption was seen by Mary Shelley and her father William Godwin on 29 August 1823 at the English Opera House shortly after her return to England. [8] Shelley approved of the way the Creature, played by T.P. Cooke in over 350 performances during his acting career, was represented by a series of dashes in the advertising. [9]
It may be significant, however, that Clairmont was taken ill at about the same time – according to Mary Shelley's journal she was ill on 27 December – and that her journal of June 1818 to early March 1819 has been lost. [19] In a letter to Isabella Hoppner of 10 August 1821, Mary Shelley, however, stated emphatically that "Claire had no child".
The Shelleys were fond of Allegra, but Mary Shelley feared that neighbours would believe Percy Bysshe Shelley had fathered her as the truth about her relationship to Clairmont leaked out. William Godwin, Mary's father and Clairmont's stepfather, had immediately leapt to that conclusion when he learned of Allegra's birth. [3]