Poetic justice - Home of Romantic couple marked with blue plaque

IT is one of the most captivating and unconventional love stories of the Romantic era.
Now the relationship between heavyweight literary couple Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley has been celebrated with a double blue plaque outside their former lodgings in Bloomsbury.
Shelley’s most recent biographer Ann Wroe, who lives in Gospel Oak, was joined by Marchmont Association chairman Ricci de Freitas and the Camden Mayor Councillor Faruque Ansari at the unveiling at 87 Marchmont Street on Saturday.
The revolutionary poet Percy and his author wife Mary Shelley lived in the small flat in 1815 while on the run from creditors. The couple had eloped to Italy after Percy abandoned his pregnant first wife.
Their first child was born there and Mary is said to have completed her Gothic thriller Frankenstein while staying at the Marchmont Street address.
Shelley wrote “The Spirit of Solitude” poem, his first major achievement, while staying in the flat.
Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, who shared Shelley’s liberal views on open relationships and sex before marriage, also lived in the flat at that same time. Clairmont, who formed part of a love triangle with the married couple, later became the mistress of the poet Lord Byron.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was drowned one month before his 30th birthday on July 8 1822 after a freak storm up-ended his sailing boat off the coast of Livorno in Italy.
Mary Shelley was the daughter of visionary feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who is buried in St Pancras cemetery.
TOM FOOT