General Chat

This is not a soap opera, it's a real life, but whose?????

My mother died of infection after giving birth to me. I was brought up with my elder illegitimate half-sister whom my mother had conceived in France with an American. My father remarried and I gained a step-sister. I went to live with a married man in Italy. His wife committed suicide. We had two children that died. My step-sister came with us and she had an illegitimate daughter. My elder half-sister also committed suicide. Then my husband drowned. Oh, and I also wrote a best-selling book which is still read today.

No idea but she sounds very unlucky. :0) Joan

Mary Shelly? Viv

Could we have another clue - maybe a date? Kaye x

Daphne Du Maurier? Poor soul whoever she was! Debby

Was her dog called lucky? Davex

Viv Easy to see you are degree-material! It's Mary Shelley. She had a very melodramatic life, and much of it was heart-breaking. Her novel Frankenstein was turned into a play which was successful in London, but although she was a penniless widow she received no money from it as the law then was different. I've just read a brilliant fictional account of her life, together with that of her sisters, Shelley, Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb, Byron's half-sister Augusta (with whom he had an affair) and Fanny Brawne, Keats' fiancee. I thoroughly recommend it: Passion, by Jude Morgan. nell

I do remember reading that the Frankenstein novel followed one of her miscarriages and was influenced by her misery over the loss of the children, in that she imagined she could bring them back to life????

Nell, The only thing that rang a bell was her husband drowning...all I could think of Byron! viv

'The story of Frankenstein started on summer in 1816, when Mary joined with Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont near Geneva Lord Byron. She took a challenge, set by Lord Byron, to write a ghost story. With her husband's encouragement, she completed the novel within a year. At the Villa Diodati she had been a 'silent listener' of her husband and Byron, who discussed about galvanism. At Eton College Shelley had become interested in Luigi Calvani's experiments with electric shocks to make dead frogs' muscles twitch. It is possible that his teacher, James Lind, had demonstrated the technique to Shelley. Byron and Shelley talked Dr Darwin's experiments with a piece of vermicelli. In her 'Introduction' to the 1831 edition Mary revealed that she got the story from a dream, in which she saw 'the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with a uneasy, half vital motion.'

Ah missed this and I love these threads, I do hope you will be doing more Nell? Not that I am the best at these but I think they are brilliant. Pat x

Pat Watch this space! The book Passion ends shortly after Byron's death. I wondered how long Mary had lived and looked at a biog on the internet. Found she'd died in 1851 so thought I would see her death index - guess what: SHELLEY, Mary *craft 1851 March Deaths (not looked up - only worthwhile if corrected) So the famous Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley was not known to her transcriber! Infamous in life and misrecorded in death. A tragic story indeed. nell