In the early 19th century, England was unforgiving towards social and sexual deviants. Tuscany, on the other hand, was ruled by a grand duke who was unconcerned about the morals of his visitors. Plus, it was cheap. That is why it became a ‘paradise of exiles’.

In 1819, a particularly notorious group of exiles arrived in the Tuscan port of Livorno: Percy Bysshe Shelley, with his second wife, Mary, and sister-in-law, Claire Clairmont. The Shelleys were grieving the death of their son, who had perished in Rome in the summer, and the loss of Clairmont’s daughter Allegra, who had recently been handed over to her father, Lord Byron. The Shelleys had very little money and Mary was pregnant again. They went to Florence for the birth of her new son, and moved on to Pisa in January. There, Mary was grateful to find a friend, as unconventional a woman as the Shelleys could desire. She was an attractive figure, according to Clairmont: ‘very tall, of a lofty and calm presence. Her features were regular and delicate; her large blue eyes singularly well-set; her complexion of a clear pale, but yet full of life, and giving an idea of health’. She was in her forties, intelligent, sensible, dressed with unusual simplicity and went by the name of Mrs Mason.

Mary must have known Mrs Mason – aka Margaret King – at least by sight, since her father William Godwin’s publishing venture, the Juvenile Library, had published her successful children’s book Stories of Old Daniel, Or, Tales of Wonder and Delight in 1807. Mary was ten at the time, and