 In the summer of 1824 , Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams . She may have been , in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark , " a little in love " with Jane . Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary , owing to Mary 's inadequacy as a wife . At around this time , Mary Shelley was working on her novel , The Last Man ( 1826 ) ; and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley — the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband . She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving , who intrigued her . Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him . She refused , saying that after being married to one genius , she could only marry another . Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself . Mary Shelley was aware of Payne 's plan , but how seriously she took it is unclear . 
