A gothic mystery rewoven

The mysterious Swansea death of Fanny Imlay, half- sister of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, sits at the heart of Jo Mazelis’ latest novel, writes Jenny White

- Jenny White

JO MAZELIS' latest novel, The Forger’s Ink, has been brewing since the 1990s, when she sat in the magnificent circular reading room of Swansea's Old Library and read about the 1816 suicide of Fanny Imlay in an old bound edition of The Cambrian.

Fanny Imlay was the daughter of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and half-sister of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Imlay died in Swansea and is buried in an unmarked grave, most likely in what is now the churchyard of St Matthew's Church on Swansea's High Street.

The reasons for her suicide are shrouded in mystery, with possible factors including unrequited love for Percy Shelley, rejection from a teaching job, and a complex family life.

Mazelis recalls the immediacy of reading about the story in a newspaper from the time.

“Seeing and handling the newspaper from 1816 is very different from reading the same on a microfiche - it's a direct connection to the past,” she says. “I've rewritten versions of The Forger’s Ink many times, under different titles and in different forms.”

In those years she has written other books, including her first novel, Significance, which won the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, and her second book, Circle Games, which was longlisted for Wales Book of the Year. But the mystery of Fanny Imlay’s story continued to call to her.