William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. IX. 1812-1819
William Godwin, Diary, 29-31 December 1816
“Decr. 29, Su. Mandeville ça la. P. B. S.
and M. W. G. dine and sup.
“30, M. Write to
Hume. Call on Mildred w. P. B. S., M. W.
G., and M. J.; they dine
and sup; tea Constable’s w.
Wells, Wallace,
Patrick, and Miss C.
See No. XVIII. infra pag ult.
“31, Tu. They
breakfast, dine, and sup. Holinshead,
Ric. iii.”
Mary Jane Godwin [née Vial] (1768-1841)
The second wife of William Godwin, whom she married in 1801 after a previous relationship
in which was born her daughter Claire Clairmont (1798-1879). With her husband she was a
London bookseller.
Raphael Holinshed (1525 c.-1580 c.)
English historian; published
Chronicles of England, Scotland, and
Ireland (1577), the source for several of Shakespeare's history plays.
Joseph Hume (1777-1855)
After service in India he became a radical MP for Weymouth (1812), Aberdeen (1818-30,
1842-55), Middlesex (1830-37), and Kilkenny (1837-41); he was an associate of John Cam
Hobhouse and a member of the London Greek Committee. Maria Edgeworth: “Don't like him
much; attacks all things and persons, never listens, has no judgment.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851)
English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of
Frankenstein (1818)
and
The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works
(1839-40).
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of
Queen
Mab (1813),
The Revolt of Islam (1817),
The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and
Adonais (1821).
