George Gordon, Lord Byron
Byron, 1788-1824, English poet and friend of
Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The three met through the agency of Claire
Clairmont, daughter of Godwin's second wife and therefore Mary
Godwin's step-sister and just eight months her junior. A certain
competitiveness existed between the two as girls in the Godwin household
and later in their adolescence. Claire encouraged the elopement of Mary
with the already married Percy Bysshe Shelley and went along on the
expedition through France, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, recounted
in Mary's History of a Six Weeks'
Tour. Upon their return she set up as part of the household.
Determined to make her own fortune within the literary pantheon, Claire,
in an elaborate scheme, managed to seduce Byron during his last weeks in
England. Finding herself pregnant, she then managed to get her household
to move to Geneva in order to secure
from Byron a provision for her expected child.
