 Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution . In 1828 , she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée , but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love . She was delighted when her old friend from Italy , Edward Trelawny , returned to England , and they joked about marriage in their letters . Their friendship had altered , however , following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley ; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley 's poems . Oblique references in her journals , from the early 1830s until the early 1840s , suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk , who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others . 
