 When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814 , Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal , which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks ' Tour , adding four letters , two by each of them , based on their visit to Geneva in 1816 , along with Percy Shelley 's poem " Mont Blanc " . The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing . The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue ; in particular , it addresses the effects of politics and war on France . The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the " great and extraordinary events " of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his " Hundred Days " return in 1815 . They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean @-@ Jacques Rousseau . 
