14th May, 2025

Guest Post: Jo Mazelis on how Fanny Imlay inspired her novel ‘The Forger’s Ink’

In today’s guest blog, Jo Mazelis reflects on what we know about Mary Shelley’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay, and why she finds her story fascinating. 14 May was Fanny Imlay’s birthday; Fanny is a central character in Jo’s new novel The Forger’s Ink, which reimagines what might have happened, had Fanny not died in Swansea in 1816.

The Girl They Left Behind 

On Wednesday, 14th May, two hundred and nine years ago in Le Havre, Mary Wollstonecraft gave birth to a daughter she named Frances. One account records this baby’s name as Françoise, but she was always known familiarly, as Fanny. Her conception must have occurred sometime during August 1793 while her mother, a radical feminist Englishwoman, and her father, Gilbert Imlay, an American author and adventurer, were both in Paris during the French Revolution. Like other political idealists and philosophers each had gone there in support of the revolution. They fell in love, but didn’t marry, though for the sake of propriety they pretended they had. 

The Reign of Terror and the fear everyone began to feel in that atmosphere, were perhaps imprinted on the child developing inside Wollstonecraft’s womb. Added to that was at least one suicide attempt by Wollstonecraft while she was pregnant with Fanny, and Gilbert Imlay’s quickly evaporating interest in either mother or child must have created enormous stress. There was also society’s judgment of unmarried mothers and their illegitimate offspring and, once back in Great Britain, the fear and suspicion of radicals, especially one as outspoken as the feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft.  

Once back in London, Gilbert Imlay sent Wollstonecraft and the one-year-old Fanny on what might have been something of wild goose chase to Scandinavia. Wollstonecraft later published an account of her journey, and here minute fragments of Fanny Imlay’s nascent personality appear. It seems astonishing now that even with the support of a nursemaid any woman would have attempted such a journey. Not long after Wollstonecraft’s return to Britain, the relationship with Imlay ended. 

When her mother fell in love for the second time, this time with the political philosopher and radical, William Godwin, things very quickly went wrong for Fanny. Mary Wollstonecraft died less than a fortnight after giving birth to Godwin’s first child, the baby girl who would grow up to become Mary Shelley. Godwin was left with the care of two very young daughters; one a newborn, the other aged just three years and three months.  

The impact of these events can’t be underestimated, and even though rates of maternal and infant mortality were shockingly high, the psychological impact on those left behind was not lessened. Fanny’s reaction to the loss of her primary caregiver must have been huge and lasting. Godwin’s grief must also have infected her, as did his growing preference for his own daughter.  

Matters worsened when, perhaps compelled by the need to find the girls a replacement mother, Godwin married a neighbour, Mrs Clairmont in 1801. Mary-Jane Clairmont already had two children, Claire and Charles. Very soon the newly wedded Mr and Mrs Godwin added a son called William to the brood. For Fanny, who had grown up the only child of a single mother, there was suddenly a whole tribe around her, and only one of them shared her blood. Her stepbrother once sarcastically quipped, ‘It is sure to rain on Fanny’s birthday!’ and Godwin claimed that Fanny ‘made a luxury of her melancholy’ statements that must have cut deep for Fanny. 

To add to her loneliness and alienation there was yet another thing which set her apart; while in Scandanavia with her mother, Fanny had caught smallpox and this disease had left her face pockmarked and disfigured. There is a painting by Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela from 1893 entitled ‘Pockmarked Boy from Savo’ showing the effects on the skin. It’s hard to imagine how badly this may have affected her, but in that period, she would have known it greatly lowered her marriageable status. 

She seemed trapped in every respect; abandoned by her half-sister Mary and stepsister Claire, probably barely tolerated by Mrs Clairmont. She tried to take on the role of peacekeeper, while at the same time she offered support to her errant sisters by carrying secret notes for them. She also tried, I imagine, to do what she could to help her adopted father, William Godwin. She had hoped (rather like Jane Eyre) to work as a teacher. Mary Wollstonecraft’s sisters ran a small school in Ireland and there were plans for her to work for them, but then the disgrace of Mary and Claire running away with Percy Shelley scuppered this scheme, as the aunts feared that no-one would want to send their children to be taught by the sister of such wanton young women.  

I have often wondered what exactly took the twenty-two-year-old Fanny to Swansea. I don’t believe that her sole purpose was to end her life. I don’t believe as some writers have implied that she was brokenhearted because of Percy Shelley either. She may have hoped for work, or for passage on a ship to Ireland or even further afield to America, possibly to New Jersey where her father was from. Maybe she had hoped to reach the Ohio River Valley in Kentucky where Gilbert Imlay had set his utopian novel of 1793, The Emigrants.  

With her astonishing lineage Fanny Imlay should have been someone but it seemed that like Tess of the D’Urbervilles she was born on a blighted star, unable to escape, unable to build a life for herself in any shape or form. 

Jo Mazelis

Discover how Jo’s research and interest in Fanny Imlay’s life transformed into her mysterious and enthralling novel, The Forger’s Ink – available now from all good bookshops and as an ebook.