1792 Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminist A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is published.
1793 William Godwin’s radical political treatise, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, is published.
1797 Mary Wollstonecraft marries William Godwin in St Pancras Church, London. Wollstonecraft already has one daughter, Fanny (b. May 1794), by Gilbert Imlay.
August Mary Wollstonecraft gives birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
September Mary Wollstonecraft dies – her daughter, Mary, is only eleven days old.
1801 William Godwin marries Mary Jane Vial. Mary Jane already has a daughter, Jane Clairmont (b. 1798) aged twenty-one.
1814 Mary Godwin meets Percy Bysshe Shelley and they embark on a relationship. Percy is twenty-two years old and married. His wife, Harriet, is pregnant with their second child.
July William Godwin disapproves of the relationship. Percy leaves his wife and family and flees to Europe with Mary, just sixteen, and her stepsister, Jane.
November Percy’s estranged wife, Harriet Shelley, gives birth to their second child, Charles.
1815 February Mary gives birth to her first child with Percy – Clara. Clara dies at just thirteen days old.
1816 January Mary gives birth to a son, William.
May Percy, Mary and their son William leave for a tour of Europe. Mary’s stepsister Jane also joins them (pregnant with Lord Byron’s child). The weather takes a turn for the worse and they are confined indoors. Byron challenges the group to write their own ghost stories. It is here that Mary begins to write her acclaimed novel Frankenstein.
October Mary’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay, commits suicide in Swansea, aged twenty-two.
December After being missing for a month, Percy’s wife, Harriet Shelley, is found in the Serpentine River, Hyde Park, London. She was twenty-one years old and heavily pregnant at the time of her death.
A pregnant Mary marries Percy at St Mildred’s Church in London. She is reconciled with her father.
1818 Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus is anonymously published in three volumes and to immediate success.
May Mary writes her mythological drama, Proserpine, written for children. Percy contributes two poems to the piece.
September Mary’s daughter Clara dies from dysentery in Venice.
1819 Mary and Percy’s three-year-old son William dies of cholera in Italy.
November Mary gives birth to their fourth child, Percy Florence.
1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns when his boat capsizes in the Gulf of Spezia. He is cremated and buried in Rome.
1824 Following her return to England with her son, Mary tries to publish a selection of Percy’s poems but Percy’s father, Sir Timothy Shelley, demands that she cease all writing and publications about his late son.
April Lord Byron dies in Greece.
1826 Mary Shelley’s The Last Man is published – an apocalyptic novel that tells of a future world that has been ravaged by a plague.
1832 Mary’s half-brother, William, dies (son of William Godwin and Mary Jane Vial).
1836 Mary’s father, William Godwin dies.
1837 Mary’s last novel, Falkner, which charts a young woman’s education under a tyrannical father figure, is published.
1839 A collection of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems are finally published with Sir Timothy Shelley’s permission.
1844 Sir Timothy Shelley dies. Mary’s son, Percy Florence, inherits the estate and title.
1848 Percy Florence Shelley marries Jane Gibson.
1851 Mary Shelley dies from a brain tumour after a long illness.