Percy Bysshe Shelley Hunt, was later asked by John Bedford Leno whether he preferred Shelley or Byron as a man. He replied: On 8 July 1822, less than a month before his thirtieth birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm on the Gulf of Spezia while returning from Leghorn (Livorno) to Lerici in his sailing boat, the "Don Juan." He was returning from having set up "The Liberal" with the newly arrived Leigh Hunt. The name "Don Juan", a compliment to Byron, was chosen by Edward John Trelawny, a member of the Shelley–Byron Pisan circle. However, according to Mary Shelley's testimony, Shelley changed
Percy Bysshe Shelley Fanny Imlay and Claire Clairmont, were his adopted step-daughters. Godwin's first wife, the celebrated feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", had died shortly after giving birth to Godwin's biological daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, named after her mother. Fanny was the illegitimate daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and her lover, the diplomat speculator and writer, Gilbert Imlay. Claire was the illegitimate daughter of Godwin's much younger second wife, Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin, whom Shelley considered a vulgar woman—"not a proper person to form the mind of a young girl", he is supposed to have said—and Sir