Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca is an 1823 historical novel by the Romantic novelist Mary Shelley, set amongst the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.
Title page from the second volume of Valperga
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who is best known for writing the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.
Richard Rothwell's portrait of Shelley was shown at the Royal Academy in 1840, accompanied by lines from Percy Shelley's poem The Revolt of Islam calling her a "child of love and light".
Page from William Godwin's journal recording "Birth of Mary, 20 minutes after 11 at night" (left column, fourth row)
The Polygon (at left) in Somers Town, London, between Camden Town and St Pancras, where Mary Godwin was born and spent her earliest years
Percy Bysshe Shelley was inspired by the radicalism of Godwin's Political Justice (1793). When the poet Robert Southey met Shelley, he felt as if he were seeing himself from the 1790s. (Portrait by Amelia Curran, 1819.)
