• Name: Perry, James (Pirie)
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 30  October  1756
• Death Date: 5  December  1821
• Occupation: journalist

James Perry was the proprietor of the Morning Chronicle and an associate of Godwin's and Holcroft's from the 1780s. Perry moved to London in 1777 aged 21. He went to Paris in summer 1791 as a deputy of the London Revolution Society and reported from there for almost a year (DNB) - this suggests that the 2 refs in Feb 1792 may not be to Perry, but they are to dinners with the Holcroft/Crosdil/Shield/Nicholson circle, and so are very much Perry's milieu. This suggests that Perry may have returned briefly from Paris - had it been a different Perry (such as Sampson Perry) we might reasonably have expected a wider range of contacts than the two meetings in February 1792.

Perry spent three months of 1798 in Newgate for pblishing a libel on the House of Lords. He married Anne Hull in 1798 (she dies in Feb 1815). In August 1802, during the Peace of Amiens, when Perry is in England, Godwin seems to have asked him if he would write a letter in support of Holcroft's application for a passport - but Perry replied that it would be unwise given his own standing and Holcrofts (MS. Abinger c. 8, fol. 2: 24 Aug. 1802).

In 1817 Perry became ill and and semi-retired. Godwin notes Perry's death in 1821 (Sampson Perry dies in 1823). 'Perry's, Merton' refers to Merton, London (near Wimbledon) .

In 1834 a William Perry appears (see M. Shelley's Journals, Appendix III, p. 616 - which quotes a letter from Godwin to Mary Jane - having met W Perry at M Shelley's on 18 August 1834: 'I have been pestered with application from William Perry, the man that several years ago did no good to the portrait of Bradshaw for the lives of the Philipses. He was in the last degree of distress, without a short. I gave him three shillings....He fomerly made a portrait of Joseph Johnson, and another of first mamma. (From MS. Abinger c. 43, fols. 37-8: 20 Aug. 1834). This suggests that the 'Perry painter' entries might refer to W Perry, but they are not coded as such. See the biographical note in the Mary Shelley Diary (616-7) for other Perrys.

There are several entries for Perrys and four for Mrs Perry (1802,1803, and 1806)

• MS. Abinger c. 8, fol. 2: 24 Aug. 1802
• MS. Abinger c. 43, fols. 37-8: 20 Aug. 1834
• DNB; The journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–1844, ed. by Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, 2 vols (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press; Clarendon Press, 1987)

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.

• Name: Perry, Anne (née Hull)
• Gender: Female
• Birth Date: 1773
• Death Date: 1815

See her husband's DNB entry, "James Perry". Perry's financial position was stable enough for him to contemplate matrimony, and on 23 August 1798 he married Anne Hull (1773–1815), ‘a woman of pleasing manners and intelligent countenance’ (Holcroft, 2.180); they had eight children, including Sir Thomas Erskine Perry and Anne Horatia (d. 1855), who married the diplomatist John Crawfurd (1783–1868). Anne Perry died in February 1815 after having resided for some time at Lisbon to recover from consumption, only to be carried off by pirates on her voyage back to England and kept prisoner in Africa for several weeks. She died at Bordeaux after her release and on her way home. Perry had saved her life on 26 December 1798 when her clothes caught fire; he put out the flames with his hands, burning them badly.

• DNB
• The Life of Thomas Holcroft

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.