Edward Ellerker Williams - Friendship With Medwin and Trelawny

Friendship With Medwin and Trelawny

In 1819 Medwin (left) returned to London and persuaded the Williamses to travel with him to Geneva, where they lived until September 1820. In February Jane and Edward's first child, Edward Medwin (d.1897), was born. Williams also wrote an article on big game hunting for a Swiss encyclopaedia, Bibliotèque universelle des sciences, belles-lettres, et des arts.

Medwin left, and the Williamses moved first to Chalon and then to Italy, where they met with Medwin again in January 1821 in Pisa. Medwin introduced them to Shelley's circle, and Williams became a close companion of Shelley, writing a play under his tutelage, The Promise, or a Year, a Month and a Day, which he sent to Covent Garden, although it was rejected. The Williamses' second child, Jane Rosalind (d.1880), was born on 16 March.

Williams met Lord Byron in November 1821 and Edward John Trelawny in January 1822. Whilst Mary Shelley was struggling to overcome the effects of another miscarriage, Shelley developed an escapist crush on Jane Williams, addressing many of his poems to her.