 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 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 John Lethbridge.The brilliant Mary was being educated in Scotland when Shelley first became acquainted with the Godwin family.