The manuscript material by Claire Clairmont in the Pforzheimer Collection consists of writings and correspondence. The writings include: two holograph journals kept during her travels with the Shelleys; holograph notes and essays prepared for E. J. Trelawny, relating to Shelley and Byron; and an effusive book inscription to Captain Edward Silsbee, the Shelley enthusiast. The bulk of the correspondence is from 1847-1856, and includes reflections on her experiences with Byron and the Shelleys, and various matters of family interest. Correspondents include: Lord Byron, English poet; Antonia Clairmont, her sister-in-law; Edward John Trelawny, the writer and adventurer; and over half a dozen others.
Clara Mary Jane Clairmont, commonly known as "Claire," step-sister of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and member of the Shelley circle. An aspiring novelist and writer of significant journals and letters, she spent many years as a governess, and was the mother of Lord Byron's child Allegra.
This guide considers the Claire Clairmont manuscript material in three series: Series I, Writings; Series II, Correspondence; and Series III: Notations on envelopes from Mary Shelley. Items published in Shelley and his Circle, or in Marion Stocking's edition of The Clairmont Correspondence (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1995) are noted with reference.
This guide lists and describes the manuscript materials held by the Pforzheimer Collection that were created by Claire Clairmont. These materials have been acquired throughout the history of the Collection, and are kept at the New York Public Library.
The first Claire Clairmont manuscript materials acquired by the Collection – including her 1818 journal – came from the 1820 sale of the library of the bibliographer and forger Harry Buxton Forman. Over the next seventy years, occasional Clairmont acquisitions were made, most often through auction. In the late 1990's, the Collection acquired the papers of Clairmont's family from her living collateral descendants; these papers contained over twenty items in the hand of Claire Clairmont.
Because the Pforzheimer Collection collects actively, its holdings in Claire Clairmont manuscript material may grow in the future as items become available for acquisition.
Processed by Charles Carter and Timothy Gress, 2022.
In addition to manuscripts by Claire Clairmont, the Pforzheimer Collection holds many manuscripts relating to Clairmont, including the insurance policy she took out in 1835 in case Percy Florence Shelley should predecease Sir Timothy Shelley (S'ANA 0175); as well as the Clairmont Family Papers, a collection of hundreds of manuscript letters, diaries and documents ranging in date from the mid-eighteenth to the twentieth century (see NYPL Catalog record for Clairmont Family Papers). Also held is a printed copy of her short story "The Pole," a collaboration with her step-sister Mary Shelley. A few scarce Clairmont-related printed secondary sources from late nineteenth-century journals are held, including William Graham's "Chats with Jane Clermont" (1893), and Sir Edward Tyas Cook's "Posthumous Interviews with Jane Clairmont." Most significant modern secondary sources on Clairmont are also available, chief among them the works edited by Marion Stocking: The Journals of Claire Clairmont (1968) and The Clairmont Correspondence (1995). The Collection also holds a few early editions of The Aspern Papers by Henry James, who based his story on Clairmont's dealings with Captain Edward Silsbee over the Shelley papers in her possession.
Across the hall from the Pforzheimer Collection, the Library's Berg Collection holds forty manuscript letters from Mary Shelley written to Clairmont, dated ca. 1842- 1848, copied in the hand of Clairmont's niece Paola, with corrections and additions in Clairmont's own hand.