Exhibition timeline
1791
First meeting of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.
1796
Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin become lovers.
1797
Marriage of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Birth of their daughter Mary. Death of Mary Wollstonecraft shortly afterwards.
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1798
Godwin publishes a memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft and an edition of her posthumous works.
More about the Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
1810
Shelley enters University College, Oxford.
1811
Shelley publishes The Necessity of Atheism and is expelled from Oxford University. Soon afterwards he marries Harriet Westbrook.
1812
Shelley meets William Godwin.
1814
Shelley elopes with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. They tour the Continent (accompanied by Claire Clairmont, Mary's step-sister).
1816
Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Lord Byron spend the summer by Lake Geneva. Mary conceives of Frankenstein.
1818
Shelley and Mary leave England for Italy. Death of their daughter Clara, aged one.
1819
Death of Shelley's and Mary's son William, aged three-and-a-half. Birth of their son Percy Florence.
1822
Death of Claire Clairmont's and Lord Byron's daughter, Allegra, aged five. Shelley drowns off the Italian coast.
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1823
Mary Shelley returns to England with Percy Florence. A year later she published an edition of Shelley's posthumous works, withdrawn after Shelley's father Sir Timothy objects.
1836
Death of William Godwin. Mary Shelley agreed to write his autobiography (never completed).
1839
Mary Shelley publishes editions of Shelley's poetical works and prose.
1844
Death of Sir Timothy Shelley. Percy Florence inherits the baronetcy.
1848
Sir Percy Shelley marries Jane St. John (née Gibson).
1851
Death of Mary Shelley. Sir Percy and Lady Shelley live at Boscombe Manor, near Bournemouth, where Lady Shelley creates a 'Sanctum' of the family manuscripts and relics.
1882
Sir Percy and Lady Shelley privately print transcripts of the Shelley manuscripts as Shelley and Mary.
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1889
Death of Sir Percy Shelley. 
1893
Lady Shelley opens the Shelley Memorial, University College, Oxford. She gives one third of the family archive to the Bodleian Library, but forbids access to the correspondence until 1922. Selected items are put on public display in the Library.
1899
Death of Lady Shelley. Bequeaths two thirds of the family archive to her husband's cousin John Shelley (later Sir John Shelley-Rolls). The final third she bequeaths to her two eldest grandsons (by adoption), Shelley Scarlett and Robert Scarlett, later the 5th and 6th Barons Abinger.
1974
The 8th Baron Abinger deposits his collection on loan at the Bodleian Library from 1974 to 1993.
2004
The Bodleian Library purches the final part of the family archive (including the manuscripts of Frankenstein) from the 9th Baron Abinger.
