Death and the Maidens Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle

1816 was the fateful year when the Romantic poet Shelley and his lover Mary shared a hectic creative and sexual menage in Switzerland with Lord Byron. This intense period drew from the men some of the greatest poetry of the age; from Mary, it elicited the seminal figures of Frankenstein and his Creature. But for other women close to Shelley it was a time of tragedy. At the heart of the story are Fanny Wollstonecraft and Harriet Westbrook, women whose lives were literally overwhelmed by him - and who both committed suicide before the year was out.