Her brother, John Wheeler Cleveland, was an officer in the British Army who eventually reached the rank of general.

[6] After returning to London, she fell in love with John Edward Johnson, who was the captain of an East Indiaman.

Edwards had inherited enough money from his father, a military historian and descendant of Oliver Cromwell, to allow them to live comfortably.

[12] Their relationship initially drew disapprobation from their families, with Jane's brother and Edward's stepmother reproaching them for their decisions.

Though long distance mail moved very slowly then, Jane and her husband exchanged angry letters shortly after she left him for Edward.

Jane and Edward then travelled to France for several months, before joining Medwin and the Shelleys in Pisa in January 1821.

[20] Edward and Percy Shelley soon became close friends and often went boating, though this practice made their wives nervous.

[25] The two couples later shared a house in a remote location near Lerici, where they were visited in early 1822 by Edward John Trelawny.

[26][27] Though they enjoyed each other's company, the house was small and the arrangements led to numerous conflicts between the servants of each family.

[34][35] This attraction and the close quarters in which the couples lived caused what has been described as "an extraordinary and mounting tension within the isolated household".

[36] Though she was flattered by the attention, Jane was careful not to reciprocate openly in order to avoid arousing her husband's suspicions.

[20][43] Shelley was particularly captivated by Jane's singing voice, to the extent that some commentators have suggested it had a hypnotic effect on him.

Shelley also purchased her a flageolet and wanted to give her a harp, but abandoned that plan due to its expense.

[49] In July 1822, Edward Williams and Percy Shelley drowned when their boat sank during a storm while returning to Lerici from Pisa.

Shortly before their deaths, Jane dreamed of floods and on one occasion thought that she had seen Shelley's ghost through a window.

After hearing of their deaths, Jane and Mary travelled back to Pisa for the funerals of their husbands; Williams and Shelley were cremated on consecutive days in August 1822.

Upon returning to England, Jane initially stayed with her elderly mother and often visited Vincent Novello and his family.

[57][58][59] Though her legal husband, John Edward Johnson, lived in London as well, Jane referred to herself as a widow during that period.

[60] While Jane was in Italy, John Johnson had also told people that he was widowed in order to freely attempt to find a new wife.

Hogg had been a schoolmate and a close friend of Percy Shelley, and was drawn to Jane immediately upon her return from Italy.

[12][71][73] Their friendship survived, however, and Mary Shelley was selected as the godmother of Jane's daughter Prudentia Sarah Jefferson Hogg in 1836.

[74][75] Jane's legal husband, who was still living in London, attempted to blackmail her in 1838 by publishing the details of her marital status in Barnard Gregory's The Satirist.

She sent Jane Rosalind to live with her old friend Claire Clairmont in France in an attempt to thwart the match.

Although he initially considered doing so, he chose to stay in London due to the expense that maintaining a large home would involve.

[83][84] In the years before Hogg's death, a nephew of Jane's, one of John Cleveland's seven children, came to live with them after leaving the military due to an illness.

Jane and her nephew, Harry Cleveland, became close friends and he began to run her household as she grew older.

[8][13][84] In her later years, Jane often read novels, played the piano, and spent time with Harry's daughter and her grandchildren.

After her death, she was buried along with the ashes of Edward Williams next to Thomas Jefferson Hogg in Kensal Green Cemetery.