Her voice did quiver as we parted,
Yet knew I not that heart was broken
From which it came, and I departed
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery—O Misery,
This world is all too wide for thee.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley[1]
Frances Imlay (14 May 1794 – 9 October 1816), also known as Fanny Godwin and Frances Wollstonecraft, was the illegitimate daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator and diplomat Gilbert Imlay. Wollstonecraft wrote about her frequently in her later works. Fanny grew up in the household of anarchist political philosopher William Godwin, the widower of her mother, with his second wife Mary Jane Clairmont and their combined family of five children. Fanny's half-sister Mary grew up to write Frankenstein and married Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading Romantic poet, who composed a poem on Fanny's death.
Although Gilbert Imlay and Mary Wollstonecraft lived together happily for brief periods before and after the birth of Fanny, he left Wollstonecraft in France in the midst of the Revolution. In an attempt to revive their relationship, Wollstonecraft travelled to Scandinavia on business for him, taking the one-year-old Fanny with her, but the affair never rekindled. After falling in love with and marrying Godwin, Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth in 1797, leaving the three-year-old Fanny in the hands of Godwin, along with their newborn daughter Mary.
Four years later, Godwin remarried and his new wife, Mary Jane Clairmont, brought two children of her own into the marriage, most significantly Claire Clairmont. Wollstonecraft's daughters resented the new Mrs Godwin and the attention she paid to her own daughter. The Godwin household became an increasingly uncomfortable place to live as tensions rose and debts mounted. The teenage Mary and Claire escaped by running off to the Continent with Shelley in 1814. Fanny, left behind, bore the brunt of her stepmother's anger. She became increasingly isolated from her family and died by suicide in 1816.
^Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "On Fanny Godwin". Retrieved 1 June 2007.
wide for thee. —Percy Bysshe Shelley Frances Imlay (14 May 1794 – 9 October 1816), also known as Fanny Godwin and Frances Wollstonecraft, was the illegitimate...
daughter, FannyImlay. Little is known of Imlay's early life. He was born in 1754, probably in Upper Freehold, New Jersey, where the Imlay family first...
Mary Wollstonecraft FannyImlay, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay Three brothers born in Scotland: Alexander Imlay (1794–1847), Australian...
two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, FannyImlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin...
childbirth four years previously. He, like her, had two children to care for: FannyImlay and the young Mary Shelley. Mary Jane and William married on 21 December...
Mary, along with her older half-sister, FannyImlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death...
later Mary Shelley, only eight months her senior, and his stepdaughter FannyImlay, a couple of years older. Both were the daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft...
for herself, and had a child, FannyImlay, with an American adventurer named Gilbert Imlay. In pursuit of Gilbert Imlay's business affairs, Wollstonecraft...
early October they heard that Mary's half-sister FannyImlay had killed herself. Godwin believed that Fanny had been in love with Shelley, and Shelley himself...
Fiction (1788). Wollstonecraft named her daughter, FannyImlay (1794–1816), after her friend. "Fanny Blood". Ancestry.com. Retrieved 24 September 2017...
half-siblings and step-siblings included Charles Clairmont, Claire Clairmont, FannyImlay, and Mary Shelley. He was sent as a day boy to Charterhouse School at...
theatrical plays by Elfriede Jelinek Death and the Maidens, a biography of FannyImlay Death and the Maiden (novel), a 1947 novel by Gladys Mitchell "Death...
2017. Simons, Judy (1990). Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf. University of Iowa Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-87745-291-1...
Fuseli and the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay (with whom she had an illegitimate daughter, FannyImlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William...
Ludwig Georg von Raumer, German historian and academic (d. 1873) 1794 – FannyImlay, daughter of British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (d. 1816) 1814 – Charles...
Godwin in London, after the suicides on October 9 of her half-sister, FannyImlay (by laudanum in Swansea), and on December 10 of his pregnant estranged...
William Godwin made it publicly known that her half-sister FannyImlay was illegitimate, and Imlay later killed herself. Doyle views Frankenstein as a narrative...
Godwin, FannyImlay; Stocking, Marion Kingston (1995). The Clairmont correspondence: letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and FannyImlay Godwin...
Correspondence: Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and FannyImlay Godwin. Volume 2: 1835-1879. Edited by Marion Kingston Stocking. Baltimore...
shared grandparent Thomas Dickson, and to her daughters Mary Shelley and FannyImlay. His father Otto returned to Trondheim with his mother and the young...
(rebuilt in cast iron), is opened across the River Wye. 9 October - FannyImlay, half-sister of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, takes a room at the Mackworth...
Correspondence: Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and FannyImlay Godwin, Volume 1: 1808–1834 (Johns Hopkins University Press 1995) Editor...
Global Information
"On Fanny Godwin". Retrieved 1 June 2007.
