MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY1798-1851
Anecdote Biographyof P.B. Shelley.
“... Atthe time I am speaking of, Mrs. Shelley was twenty-four. Such a rare pedigree of genius was enough to interest me in her,irrespective of her own merits as an authoress. The most striking feature in her face was her calm gray eyes; she was rather under the English standard of woman’s height, very fair and light-haired, witty, social, and animated in the society of friends, though mournful in solitude.”—1821.
The CowdenClarkes’Recollectionsof Writers.
“Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, with her well-shaped, golden-haired head, almost always a little bent and drooping; her marble-white shoulders and arms statuesquely visible in the perfectly plain black velvet dress, which the customs of that time allowed to be cut low, and which her own taste adopted; ... her thoughtful, earnest eyes; her short upper lip and intellectually curved mouth, with a certain close compressed and decisive expression while she listened, and a relaxation into fuller redness and mobility when speaking; her exquisitely formed, white, dimpled, small hands, with rosypalms, and plumply commencing fingers, that tapered into tips as slender and delicate as those in a Vandyck portrait,—all remain palpably present to memory.”—About 1824.
The Cornhill,1875.
“Shelley’s second love, who was five years his junior, is described as ‘rather short, remarkably fair, and light-haired with brownish gray eyes, a great forehead, striking features, and a noticeable air of sedateness.’ One writer has compared her with the classic bust of Clytie.”