Jane Williams

Who was Jane Williams?

Jane Williams was a British woman best known for her association with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Jane was raised in England and India before marrying a naval officer and settling in London. She soon left him for another military officer Edward Ellerker Williams. After Edward and she left England for Italy, they became acquainted with Percy and Mary Shelley. Though she never had a romantic relationship with Shelley, near the end of his life he became deeply infatuated with her and addressed several of his poems to her. After Shelley and Edward Williams perished in a boating accident, she remarried to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who was also a close friend of Percy Shelley. The rest of her life was spent as a housewife in London.