In May 1816 Percy Byssie Shelley, his wife Mary and Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont were staying in a house on Lake Geneva. That spring George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, had left England in disgrace and in debt. He and Shelley meet on the shores of the Lake and this was to be the start of a friendship which developed during the years they both spent in Italy, years full of dramatic and sometimes tragic events, but above all the years during which both poets wrote some of their most important poetry. In the summer of 1816 Byron invented a ghost story competition which inspired Mary to write the story Frankenstein which would become a classic of the Romantic period. Mary finished writing Frankenstein in May 1817 when she and Shelley were back in England. She was 19 years old. She had their first child, Clara, in September. It was not long bef'ore she and Shelley were back on the Continent again, and this time they took a house on Lake Como. They wrote to Byron to invite him to stay but he declined, probably because Claire was living with them. He had had an affair with Claire and she had had a daughter, Allegra. Byron did not want the affair to continue but he insisted on having custody of the child. Byron had spent the year in Italy and had visited Milan,Verona and then Venice, where he arrived in November 1818. His period of residence in Venice greatly contributed to the scandalous reputation he had gained both in Italy and England. He wrote some ot his greatest poetry here, including Don Juan. In the meantime the Shelleys had visited Pisa and Leghorn (Livorno) and had rented the Casa Bertini in Bagni di Lucca. Shelley's health was not good but he enjoyed the peace of his new surroundings. Unfortunately their happiness did not last long because their child Clara died in September 1818. The Shelleys moved again, visiting Rome and Naples and then returning to stay in Rome in March 1819. Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound during his visits to the ruins of the Rome Baths of Caracalla. Tragedy soon come again: their son William died of malaria in Rome. The Shelley is returned to Pisa .Keats arrived in rome in november 1820 and Shelley wrote to invite him to visit them.
Keats promised he would come in the spring but he died in february.It was April before Shelley heard of his death, which inspired one of his greatest poem,Adonais.Little more than a year later, in july 1822, shelley was drowned while sailingoff the Coast of Viareggio.the Shelleys were living in Lerici and the bay is still know as the Bay of the poets.Shelley’s body was identified by a book of Keats’ poems which was in his pocket. His friends Trelawny and Byron made arrangements for his body to be cremated on the sea shore, and his ashes were transported to Rome and buried in the Protestant Cemetery, the same cemetery where Keats’ grave was. Byron did not stay in Italy much longer. He felt the need to devote himself to a great cause, and had decided to go to help Greece in the fight for liberation. So ended the extraordinary pariod in which some of the greatest Romantic poets lived in Italy.