An Unpublished Mary Shelley Letter

The article contains a transcription of a new letter recently acquired by Keats-Shelley House, Rome. The letter, written partly by Mary Shelley and partly by her son, Percy Florence, is dated 11 February 1843 from Florence and addressed to Julian Robinson, Percy’s Cambridge friend. The Shelleys spent the winter of 1842–3 in Florence in the course of their second continental tour, recounted in Parts II and III of Mary Shelley’s Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844). The letter complements the travelogue by offering a glimpse of their daily life abroad as members of the local foreign community. We thus learn of Percy’s regular but unenthusiastic attendance at the carnival balls and his lack of interest in female society, to his mother’s chagrin. Her portion of the letter further reveals her financial difficulties and strained relationship with Laura Galloni d’Istria, Mrs Mason’s daughter, with whom Mary Shelley had been reunited after twenty years. Both mother and son also comment on the much-opposed marriage to Henry Hunt of the daughter of Jane Hogg (formerly Jane Williams), Dina.