• I could people the hours with creations

    If Mary Shelley's account of her childhood writing suggests affinities with her characterization
    of Clerval, the depiction of the Scottish idyll of her adolescence similarly encompasses
    her portrait of the young Elizabeth Lavenza, particularly her fondness for the "aërial
    creations of the poets" (see both 1818 (I:1:10) and 1831 (I:2:1) texts, and note).