28th December 1814: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin visits Garnerin's 'Phantasmagoria' in London

By Wednesday 28th December 1814, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was back in London, after returning from her elopement to the continent with Percy Shelley in September. Aged 17, she was 5 months pregnant and, at that point, estranged from her father, and lived with Shelley, as yet unmarried.

Her journals for the 28th December record an outing that night that seems likely to have later have played a part in influencing her first novel, which she would begin 18 months later:

[Shelley & I]—go to Garnerin's lecture—on Electricity—the gasses—& the Phantasmagoria

'Phantasmagoria' was the name given to an exhibition of optical illusions via a magic lantern, a relatively new but very popular form of entertainment. It had also already come to mean a series of real or imaginary images experienced in a dream, or fever-like state. It was also the name of a French collection of German ghost stories, translated by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès, which Byron would read to Mary, Shelley and others 18 months later at the villa Diodati.

Garnerin was André-Jacques Garnerin, a pioneering French balloonist & parachutist, with a now lesser-know sideline in this kind of show. A front-page advert in the classified section of The Times of the preceding day announced his show:

THEATRE of GRAND PHILOSOPHICAL RECREATIONS.—The Professor GARNERIN has the honour to inform the Nobility and Gentry, that in consequence of his engagements at Covent-garden, his Theatre will be open this week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and he hopes to merit the approbation of his numerous visitors, by his new experiments on the Electricity, Gas, Aerostation, Fantasmagoria, &c. The performance begins at 7 o'clock. Spring-gardens room.

An advert for the show in the 19th January 1815 edition of the Times promised, in addition to the above, that Garnerin would "make the experiment of Johanna Southcott's Resurrection." Southcott was still featuring in April 1815, with an advert in the Morning Post of 17th April mentioning her and detailing 'Experiments of Electricity' featuring "the Electric Dance, Delineation of a Thunderbolt, Fire produced from Water, and Imitations of the Aurora Borealis."

26th June 1814: Percy Shelley & Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin meet in St Pancras Churchyard

In the evening of Sunday 26th June 1814, the poet Percy Shelley met his lover, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at the grave of Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft in St Pancras churchyard, London. Although this location had become a regular meeting place, it was most likely this night that Mary declared her love for Shelley, and according to their journal entries, that they first made love, despite being chaperoned by Mary's half-sister, Claire Clairmont.

5th May 1814: Percy Bysshe Shelley meets Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London

On Thursday 5th May 1814, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley visited his mentor, the political philosopher William Godwin at the latter's home and bookshop at 41 Skinner Street, Islington. Shelley had been in contact with Godwin for some time, and was in fact his benefactor.

That day was to be the second time he had met Godwin's daughter, Mary, the child from Godwin's marriage to the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. On the previous occasion, in November 1811, Mary was 14 and Shelley 19, though he was already married at that time.

Their meeting was to be the dawn of a relationship that would transform both of their lives, and lead to the publication of one of the greatest works of science fiction, and of English literature.