ABSTRACT
Lady Shelley, Gibson (1820–99), the illegitimate daughter of a Newcastle-upon-Tyne banker, married Sir Percy Florence Shelley (1819–89), the sole surviving son of Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Godwin’s only grandson, in 1848. On the death in 1851 of Mary Shelley, the pair moved to Boscombe Manor, near Bournemouth. Lady Shelley is chiefly known as the driving force behind the Boscombe Shelleys’ subsequent campaign to promote a depoliticised and spiritualised image of Shelley in the nineteenth century. An essential part of Lady Shelley’s corrective memorial of Shelley was the construction of a revised image of Godwin, his father-in-law and early teacher in revolutionary politics. This chapter provides extracts that present Godwin from a variety of different angles designed to shed light on his relationship with Shelley and Mary Shelley. Lady Shelley establishes Godwin as a fit mentor for Shelley by emphasising his background in eighteenth-century religious Dissent and his moderate political views.
