Percy Florence Shelley
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet of Castle Goring (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
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.
