Percy Florence Shelley

British Baronet

Sir

Percy Florence Shelley

"The Poet's Son", a caricature by Ape published in Vanity Fair in 1879

Born| 12 November 1819

Florence, Italy

Died| 5 December 1889(1889-12-05) (aged 70)
Education| Harrow School
Trinity College, Cambridge
Title| 3rd Baronet of Castle Goring
Spouse|

Jane Gibson

(m. 1848)​

Children| Bessie Florence Gibson (Adopted)
Parent(s)| Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mary Shelley

Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet (12 November 1819 – 5 December 1889) was the son of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, novelist and author of Frankenstein. He was the only child of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to live beyond infancy. His middle name, possibly suggested by his father's friend Sophia Stacey, came from the city of his birth, Florence in Italy. He had two elder half-siblings, by his father's first marriage to Harriet Westbrook, and three full siblings who died in infancy.

## Early life and education[edit]

Percy Florence was born as the fourth child of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, his namesake, and his wife, author Mary Shelley. His elder siblings, consisting of a premature girl who died at a few weeks old and a brother and a sister who died in childhood, left him as the only surviving child after his mother suffered a miscarriage in 1822.

His parents lived in Italy for several years, until his father drowned near Livorno (then known to the English as Leghorn), whereupon his mother moved back to England with him. Mary Shelley never remarried; Percy Florence had no further siblings. He joined Harrow School in 1832, and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1837.[1]

## Adult life[edit]

Shelley inherited the baronetcy upon the death of his grandfather in 1844, becoming the 3rd Baronet of Castle Goring, Sussex. In 1845, giving his address as Putney (then a riverside village just upstream of London), he was elected to the Royal Thames Yacht Club.[2]

On 22 June 1848, he married Jane Gibson, one of nine illegitimate children of Thomas Gibson, a wealthy Newcastle banker, by Ann Shevill;[3][4] Jane was the widow of the Hon. Charles Robert St. John, son of the 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke and the Viscountess Bolingbroke, Baroness Hompesch. The couple had no children, although they adopted Jane's niece, Bessie Florence Gibson, the youngest child of Jane's brother[5] Edward Gibson.[6][7] Bessie Gibson married Lieutenant-Colonel Leopold James Yorke Campbell Scarlett (grandson of the 1st Baron Abinger, a politician and judge),[8] and was the mother of Shelley, Robert and Hugh Scarlett, the 5th, 6th and 7th Barons Abinger respectively.[9]

He was appointed High Sheriff of Sussex in 1865. He appeared in the 'Men of the Day' series in Vanity Fair in 1879 as "The Poet's Son", a caricature by Ape. The caption reads: "But he delights above all in yachting and in private theatricals, and is even now engaged in building a theatre for amateur performers. He is a gentleman."[10] His London house he fitted with a private theatre; this was in Tite Street, Chelsea, a favoured and fashionable location for people of an artistic and literary disposition, according to The London Encyclopedia.[11] While it was occupied by him and used for private performances, it caused no trouble. During a later period, however, it was rented to a tenant that used the facility for charity fund-raising performances where tickets were publicly sold, thus contravening the local bylaws. According to Yachting World, Shelley was a member of the prestigious and exclusive Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes on the Isle of Wight.[12]

## Death[edit]

Shelley died in 1889 and was buried in the family vault in the churchyard of St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, reputedly with the heart of his father alongside him. In that vault, in addition to the patrilineal family, lie the remains of his maternal grandparents, namely Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin; Shelley and his wife were instrumental in moving their bones from St Pancras Old Church in London. The Shelley baronetcy passed to his first cousin, Edward Shelley (1827–1890), of Avington House, Hampshire, a Captain in the 16th Lancers, son of John Shelley (1806–1866), of Avington House, JP, DL, High Sheriff of Hampshire in 1853,[13] the younger brother of Percy Bysshe Shelley.[14]

## Legacy[edit]

A blue plaque was installed, by Bournemouth Borough Council, on 30 June 1985, in honour of Shelley, at the entrance to his former home "Boscombe Manor", now the "Shelley Manor Medical Centre".[15]

## References[edit]

1. ^ "Shelley, Percy Florence (SHLY837PF)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
2. ^ "The Sporting Magazine; or Monthly calendar of the transactions of the turf, the chace, and every other diversion interesting to the man of pleasure and enterprize". 1845.
3. ^ Orr, Clarissa Campbell (1996). Wollstonecraft's Daughters: Womanhood in England and France, 1780-1920. ISBN 9780719042416.
4. ^ Mary Shelley, Miranda Seymour, John Murray, 2000, p. lxxxiv
5. ^ A Mary Shelley Encyclopaedia, Paula R. Feldman, Lucy Morrison, Staci L. Stone, Greenwood Press, 2003, p. 409
6. ^ The Complete Peerage or a History of the House of Lords and All its Members From the Earliest Times, Volume XIV: Addenda & Corrigenda, ed. Peter W. Hammond, Sutton Publishing, 1998, page 9
7. ^ The Clairmont Family Letters, 1839 – 1889, Volume 1, ed. Sharon Joffe, 7. Wilhelm Gaulis Clairmont to Claire Claremont, note 3
8. ^ The Complete Peerage or a History of the House of Lords and All its Members From the Earliest Times, Volume XIV: Addenda & Corrigenda, ed. Peter W. Hammond, Sutton Publishing, 1998, page 9
9. ^ The Complete Peerage or a History of the House of Lords and All its Members From the Earliest Times, Volume XIV: Addenda & Corrigenda, ed. Peter W. Hammond, Sutton Publishing, 1998), page 9
10. ^ "To The Manor Re-born". Dorset Life. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
11. ^ The London encyclopaedia (3rd ed.). London: Macmillan. 2008. p. 918\. ISBN 978-1-405-04924-5.
12. ^ Bird, Belinda (18 May 2015). "Inside the Royal Yacht Squadron – we get a rare view of this most exclusive club". Yachting World. Retrieved 19 September 2016.
13. ^ The County Families of the United Kingdom, Edward Walford, Robert Hardwicke, Piccadilly, 1869, p. 876
14. ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 2003, vol. 1, p. 1079
15. ^ "Percy Florence Shelley blue plaque". Openplaques.org. Retrieved 29 February 2016.

Baronetage of the United Kingdom

Preceded by

Timothy Shelley

|  Baronet
(of Castle Goring)
1844–1889  | Succeeded by

Edward Shelley

* v
* t
* e

Mary Shelley

Works|

* History of a Six Weeks' Tour
* Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
* Mathilda
* Proserpine
* Midas
* Valperga
* "Maurice"
* The Last Man
* The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
* "The Mortal Immortal"
* Lodore
* Falkner
* Rambles in Germany and Italy
* Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men

Family|

* Percy Bysshe Shelley (husband)
* Percy Florence Shelley (son)
* Mary Wollstonecraft (mother)
* William Godwin (father)
* Fanny Imlay (half-sister)
* Claire Clairmont (stepsister)

Portrayals|

* Bloody Poetry (1984 play)
* Gothic (1986 film)
* Rowing with the Wind (1988 film)
* Haunted Summer (1988 film)
* Mary Shelley (2017 film)
* "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" (2020 TV episode)

Related|

* Mounseer Nongtongpaw
* Frankenstein in popular culture
* Lord Byron
* John Polidori
* Thomas Jefferson Hogg
* Villa Diodati
* Frankenstein Day

* v
* t
* e

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Plays|

* The Cenci (1819)
* Hellas (1822)

Fiction|

* Zastrozzi (1810)
* St. Irvyne (1811)

Non-fiction|

* "The Necessity of Atheism" (1811)
* "Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things" (1811)
* "A Letter to Lord Ellenborough" (1812)
* A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)
* History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817)
* "On Frankenstein" (1817, published 1832)
* A Philosophical View of Reform (1819–20, published 1920)
* "A Defence of Poetry" (published posthumously, 1840)

Poetry collections|

* Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810)
* Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson (1810)

Short poems|

* "The Devil's Walk" (1812)
* "Mutability" (1816)
* "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (1817)
* "Ozymandias" (1818)
* "Love's Philosophy" (1819)
* "Ode to the West Wind" (1820)
* "To a Skylark" (1820)
* "The Cloud" (1820)
* "One Word is Too Often Profaned" (1822)
* "Music, When Soft Voices Die" (1824)
* "A Dirge" (1824)
* "England in 1819" (1834)

Long poems|

* Queen Mab (1813)
* Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816)
* Mont Blanc (1817)
* The Revolt of Islam (1818)
* Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue (1819)
* Prometheus Unbound (1820)
* Epipsychidion (1821)
* Adonaïs (1821)
* Julian and Maddalo (1824)
* The Witch of Atlas (1824)
* The Triumph of Life (1824)
* The Masque of Anarchy (1832)

Chapbooks|

* Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit (1822)
* Wolfstein, The Murderer; or, The Secrets of a Robber's Cave (1850)

Collaborations with
Mary Shelley|

* History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817)
* Proserpine (1820)
* Midas (1820)

Adaptations|

* Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline (1977)
* Zastrozzi, A Romance (1986)

Places|

* Keats–Shelley Memorial House
* Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
* Rising Universe
* Shelley's Cottage
* Shelley Memorial
* Villa Diodati

Authorship debates|

* Frankenstein authorship question
* The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein

People|

* Mary Shelley (wife)
* Percy Florence Shelley (son)
* Timothy Shelley (father)
* Sir Bysshe Shelley (grandfather)
* Lord Byron
* Claire Clairmont
* William Godwin (father-in-law)
* Thomas Jefferson Hogg
* John Keats
* Thomas Medwin
* Thomas Love Peacock
* Edward John Trelawny

Biographies|

* The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley
* Shelley: A Life Story

Portrayals|

* Bride of Frankenstein (1935 film)
* Bloody Poetry (1984 play)
* Gothic (1986 film)
* Haunted Summer (1988 film)
* Rowing with the Wind (1988 film)
* Mary Shelley (2017 film)
* "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" (2020 TV episode)

Related|

* Shelley Memorial Award

* v
* t
* e

Mary Wollstonecraft

Works|

* Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)
* Mary: A Fiction (1788)
* Original Stories from Real Life (1788)
* A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
* A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
* Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)
* Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798)
* Analytical Review

General|

* Timeline
* Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798)

Her circle|

* William Godwin (husband)
* Jane Arden
* Henry Fuseli
* Gilbert Imlay
* Joseph Johnson (publisher)
* Richard Price (mentor)

Family|

* Fanny Imlay (daughter)
* Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (daughter)
* Percy Florence Shelley (grandson)
* Percy Bysshe Shelley (son-in-law)

Depictions|

* A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft (2020 sculpture)

Authority control

General|

* ISNI
* 1
* VIAF
* 1
* WorldCat

National libraries|

* Germany
* United States
* Netherlands

Other|

* FAST
* Social Networks and Archival Context
* Trove (Australia)
* 1

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