Claire was a superb letter-writer. She was amusing, yes, but she was also frank, passionate and gossipy. Her letters are full of detail, but like any true writer, only of the necessary kind. Later in life she was tormented by a contradiction: the need to preserve and protect her identity, and the desire not to be “lost in oblivion.” Her letters and journals betray the former; but they also defy the latter. Claire Clairmont was the archetypal Romantic woman, far more than her more famous step-sis