In what city did Mary Shelley die?

Mary Shelley died in London on 1 February 1851. She was 53 and died at Chester Square after several years of declining health, including headaches and bouts of paralysis.

Her physician suspected a brain tumour, although nineteenth-century medicine could not establish the diagnosis with modern certainty. Shelley had continued working as a writer, editor, and custodian of her husband's literary legacy despite her illness. Her only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley, and his wife, Jane, were closely involved in her final years.

London is sometimes confused with Bournemouth because that is where Mary Shelley was buried. She had lived with or near her son’s family, who maintained a home in the Bournemouth area, and they selected St Peter’s Church there as her burial place. Her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, were also associated with London and were eventually reinterred at Bournemouth.

The distinction is therefore straightforward: London was the place of death, while Bournemouth was the place of burial.