Percy Florence Shelley Bysshe Shelley, his namesake, and his wife author Mary Shelley. His elder siblings, consisting of a premature girl who died at few weeks old and a brother and a sister who died in childhood left him as the only surviving child as his mother suffered a miscarriage in 1822. His parents lived in Italy for several years, until his father drowned off Livorno, 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. Shelley inherited
Percy Bysshe Shelley Shelley passionate letters threatening to kill herself because of her unhappiness at the school and at home. Shelley, heartbroken after the failure of his romance with his cousin, Harriet Grove, cut off from his mother and sisters, and convinced he had not long to live, impulsively decided to rescue Westbrook and make her his beneficiary. Westbrook's 28-year-old sister Eliza, to whom Harriet was very close, appears to have encouraged the young girl's infatuation with the future baronet. The Westbrooks pretended to disapprove but secretly encouraged the elopement. Sir Timothy Shelley, however, outraged that his son had married beneath him (Harriet's