percy bysshe Shelley

by abdo Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:33 pm

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Percy Bysshe Shelley
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Percy Shelley
Born	4 August 1792(1792-08-04) Field Place, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], England^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Died	8 July 1822(1822-07-08) (aged 29) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Occupation	Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
Literary movement	[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Influences[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] · [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Influenced[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] · [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

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Percy Bysshe Shelley
(4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822; pronounced /ˈpɜrsi
ˈbɪʃ ˈʃɛli/^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
was one of the major [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Romantic
poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric
poets in the English
language. Shelley was famous for his association with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. The novelist [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] was his
second wife.

He is most famous for such
classic [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] verse
works as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
Ode to the West
Wind, To a
Skylark, and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
which are among the most popular and critically acclaimed poems in the English
language. His major works, however, are long visionary poems which included [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and the
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (1819)
and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (1820) were
dramatic plays in five and four acts respectively. Although he has typically
been figured as a "reluctant dramatist" he was passionate about the
theatre, and his plays continue to be performed today.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
He wrote the Gothic novels [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(1810) and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(1811) and the short prose works "The Assassins" (1814), "The
Coliseum" (1817) and "Una Favola" (1819). In 2008, he was
credited as the co-author of the novel [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (1818) in
a new edition by the Bodleian
Library in Oxford and Random House in the U.S. entitled The
Original Frankenstein edited by Charles E. Robinson.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Shelley's unconventional life
and uncompromising [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
combined with his strong disapproving voice, made him an authoritative and
much-denigrated figure during his life and afterward. Shelley never lived to
see the extent of his success and influence. Some of his works were published,
but they were often suppressed upon publication. Up until his death, with
approximately 50 readers as his audience, it is said he made no more than 40 pounds from his
writings.

He became an idol of the next
three or even four generations of poets, including the important [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and Pre-Raphaelite poets. He was admired by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s
civil disobedience and Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi's passive resistance were influenced and inspired by
Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Life

Education

A son of Sir [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] — a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Member of Parliament — and
his wife, a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] landowner,
Shelley was born 4 August 1792 at Field Place, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
near [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], England. The
eldest of seven children, he had 5 sisters and one brother. He received his
early education at home, tutored by Reverend Evan Edwards of nearby [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. His cousin and
lifelong friend Thomas
Medwin, who lived nearby, recounted his early childhood in his "The
Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley". It was a happy and contented childhood
spent largely in country pursuits such as fishing and hunting.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

In 1802, he entered the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Academy of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. In 1804, Shelley
entered [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
where he fared poorly, subjected to an almost daily [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] his
classmates called "Shelley-baits". Surrounded, the young Shelley
would have his books torn from his hands and his clothes pulled at and torn
until he cried out madly in his high-pitched "cracked soprano" of a
voice.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

On 10 April 1810, he [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
at University
College, Oxford. Legend has it that Shelley attended only one lecture while
at Oxford, but
frequently read sixteen hours a day. His first publication was a Gothic
novel, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(1810), in which he vented his [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] through the villain Zastrozzi. In the same year,
Shelley, together with his sister Elizabeth, published Original
Poetry by Victor and Cazire. While at Oxford, he issued a collection of verses
(perhaps ostensibly burlesque but quite subversive), Posthumous
Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

In 1811, Shelley published
his second Gothic novel, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
and a pamphlet called The Necessity of
Atheism. This latter gained the attention of the university
administration and he was called to appear before the College's fellows,
including the Dean, George
Rowley. His refusal to repudiate the authorship of the pamphlet resulted in
his being [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] from Oxford on 25 March 1811, along with Hogg. The
rediscovery in mid-2006 of Shelley's long-lost 'Poetical Essay on the Existing
State of Things' — a long, strident anti-monarchical and anti-war poem printed
in 1811 in
London by Crosby and Company as "by a gentleman of the University of
Oxford" — gives a new dimension to the expulsion, reinforcing Hogg's
implication of political motives ('an affair of party').^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Shelley was given the choice to be reinstated after his father intervened, on
the condition that he would have to recant his avowed views. His refusal to do
so led to a falling-out with his father.

Marriage

Four months after being
expelled, the 19-year-old Shelley [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to Scotland with the 16-year-old
schoolgirl Harriet Westbrook to get married. After their marriage on 28 August
1811, Shelley invited his college friend Hogg to share their household. When
Harriet objected, however, Shelley brought her to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
in England's [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], intending to
write. Distracted by political events, he visited Ireland shortly afterward in order
to engage in radical pamphleteering. Here he wrote his Address to the Irish
People and was seen at several nationalist rallies. His activities earned
him the unfavourable attention of the British government.

Unhappy in his nearly
three-year-old marriage, Shelley often left his wife and child ([You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], 1813–76)
alone, first to study Italian with a certain Cornelia Turner, and eventually to
visit [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] home and bookshop in London. There he met and
fell in love with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], named Mary after her mother [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
the author of A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

On 28 July 1814, Shelley
abandoned his pregnant wife and child when he ran away with Mary, then 16,
inviting her stepsister Claire
Clairmont along for company. The three sailed to Europe, crossed France, and settled in Switzerland, an
account of which was subsequently published by the Shelleys. After six weeks,
homesick and destitute, the three young people returned to England. In
late 1815, while living close to London
with Mary and avoiding creditors, he wrote Alastor,
or The Spirit of Solitude. It attracted little attention at the time,
but has now come to be recognized as his first major achievement. At this point
in his writing career, Shelley was deeply influenced by the poetry of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Byron

In mid-1816, Shelley and Mary
made a second trip to Switzerland.
They were prompted to do so by Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, who had
commenced a liaison with Lord
Byron the previous April just before his self-exile on the continent. Byron
had lost interest in her and so she used the opportunity of meeting the
Shelleys to act as bait to lure him to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. The Shelleys and Byron
rented neighbouring houses on the shores of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Regular
conversation with Byron had an invigorating effect on Shelley's output of
poetry. While on a boating tour the two took together, Shelley was inspired to
write his Hymn
to Intellectual Beauty, often considered his first significant
production since Alastor^{[[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]}. A tour of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] inspired [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], a poem in which Shelley claims to
have pondered questions of historical inevitability and the relationship
between the human mind and external nature.

Second marriage

After the Shelleys returned
to England, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] — Mary's
half-sister and Claire's stepsister — travelled from Godwin's household in London to kill herself in Wales in early October. In December
1816, Shelley's estranged wife Harriet drowned herself in the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in Hyde
Park, London.
On 30 December 1816, a
few weeks after Harriet's body was recovered, Shelley and Mary Godwin were
married. The marriage was intended, in part, to help secure Shelley's custody
of his children by Harriet, but the plan failed: the courts gave custody of the
children to foster parents because he was an atheist.

The Shelleys took up
residence in the village
of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], where
a friend of Percy's, Thomas
Love Peacock, lived. Shelley took part in the literary circle that
surrounded [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and during this period he met [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Shelley's major
production during this time was Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City, a long narrative poem in
which he attacked religion and featured a pair of incestuous lovers. It was
hastily withdrawn after only a few copies were published. It was later edited
and reissued as The
Revolt of Islam in 1818. Shelley wrote two revolutionary political
tracts under the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], "The Hermit of Marlow."

Italy

Early in 1818, the Shelleys
and Claire left England in
order to take Claire's daughter, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
to her father Byron, who had taken up residence in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Contact with the older
and more established poet encouraged Shelley to write once again. During the
latter part of the year, he wrote [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
a lightly disguised rendering of his boat trips and conversations with Byron in
Venice,
finishing with a visit to a madhouse. This poem marked the appearance of
Shelley's "urbane style". He then began the long verse drama [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], a re-writing
of the lost play by the ancient Greek poet [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], which features
talking mountains and a petulant spirit who overthrows [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Tragedy struck in 1818 and 1819, when
Shelley's son Will died of fever in Rome,
and his infant daughter Clara Everina died during yet another household move.

A baby girl, Elena Adelaide
Shelley, was born on 27 December 1818 in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Italy and registered there as the daughter of
Shelley and a woman named "Marina Padurin". However, the identity of
the mother is an unsolved mystery. Some scholars speculate that her true mother
was actually Claire Clairmont or Elise Foggi, a nursemaid for the Shelley
family. Other scholars postulate that she was a foundling Shelley adopted in
hopes of distracting Mary after the deaths of William and Clara.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Shelley referred to Elena in letters as his "Neapolitan ward".
However, Elena was placed with foster parents a few days after her birth and
the Shelley family moved on to yet another Italian city, leaving her behind.
Elena died 17 months later, on 10 June 1820.

The Shelleys moved around
various Italian cities during these years; in later 1818 they were living in a
pensione on the Via Valfonde. This street now runs alongside Florence's train
station and the building now on the site, the original having been destroyed in
World War II, carries a plaque recording the poet's stay. Here they received
two visitors, a Miss Sophia
Stacey and her much older travelling companion, Miss Corbet Parry-Jones (to
be described by Mary as 'an ignorant little Welshwoman'). Sophia had for three
years in her youth been ward of the poet's aunt and uncle. The pair moved into
the same pensione and stayed for about two months. During this period Mary gave
birth to another son; Sophia is credited with suggesting that he be named after
the city of his birth, so he became Percy Florence
Shelley, later Sir Percy. Shelley also wrote his 'Ode to Sophia Stacey'
during this time.

Shelley completed Prometheus
Unbound in Rome, and he spent mid-1819
writing a tragedy, The Cenci, in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. In this
year, prompted among other causes by the Peterloo
massacre, he wrote his best-known political poems: The Masque of Anarchy
and Men of England.
These were most likely his most-remembered works during the 19th century. Around
this time period, he wrote the essay The Philosophical View of Reform,
which was his most thorough exposition of his political views to that date.

In 1820, hearing of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]' illness from a
friend, Shelley wrote him a letter inviting him to join him at his residence at
Pisa. Keats
replied with hopes of seeing him, but instead, arrangements were made for Keats
to travel to Rome
with the artist Joseph Severn. Inspired by the death of Keats, in 1821 Shelley
wrote the elegy [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

In 1821, Shelley met Edward Ellerker
Williams, a British naval officer, and his wife [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Shelley
developed a very strong affection towards Jane and addressed a number of poems
to her. This affection was pure and platonic, almost bordering on devotion. In
the poems addressed to Jane, such as With a Guitar, To Jane and One Word is
Too Often Profaned, he elevates her to an exalted position worthy of
worship.

In 1822, Shelley arranged for
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], the British poet and editor who
had been one of his chief supporters in England,
to come to Italy
with his family. He meant for the three of them — himself, Byron and
Hunt — to create a journal, which would be called The Liberal. With
Hunt as editor, their controversial writings would be disseminated, and the
journal would act as a counter-blast to conservative periodicals such as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Leigh Hunt's son, the editor
Thornton Leigh Hunt, when later asked whether he preferred Shelley or Byron as
a man, replied:-

"On one occasion I had to fetch or take to Byron
some copy for the paper which my father, himself and Shelley, jointly
conducted. I found him seated on a lounge feasting himself from a drum of figs.
He asked me if I would like a fig. Now, in that, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
consists the difference, Shelley would have handed me the drum and allowed me
to help myself."^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Death

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Shelley's
grave in Rome

On 8 July 1822, less than a
month before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm while sailing
back from Livorno to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in his schooner, Don
Juan. Shelley claimed to have met his [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
foreboding his own death. He was returning from having set up The Liberal
with the newly arrived Leigh Hunt. The name [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], a compliment to Byron, was
chosen by Edward
John Trelawny, a member of the Shelley-Byron Pisan circle. However,
according to Mary Shelley's testimony, Shelley changed it to "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]". This annoyed Byron, who forced the
painting of the words "Don Juan" on the mainsail. This offended the
Shelleys, who felt that the boat was made to look much like a coal barge. The
vessel, an open boat, was custom-built in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for Shelley. It did not
capsize but sank; Mary Shelley declared in her "Note on Poems of
1822" (1839) that the design had a defect and that the boat was never
seaworthy. In fact the Don Juan was seaworthy; the sinking was due to a
severe storm and poor seamanship of the three men on board.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

There were those who believed
his death was not accidental. Some said that Shelley was depressed in those
days and that he wanted to die; others say that he did not know how to
navigate; others believed that some pirates mistook the boat for Byron's and
attacked him, and others have even more fantastical stories.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
There is a mass of evidence, though scattered and contradictory, that Shelley
may have been murdered for political reasons. Previously, at Plas Tan-Yr-Allt,
the Regency house he rented at Tremadog, near [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], north-west Wales, from
1812 to 1813, he had allegedly been surprised and apparently attacked during
the night by a man who may have been, according to some later writers, an
intelligence agent.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Shelley, who was in financial difficulties, left forthwith leaving rent unpaid
and without contributing to the fund to support the house owner, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]; this
may provide another, more plausible explanation for this story.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The
Funeral of Shelley by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (1889); pictured in
the centre are, from left, Trelawny, Hunt and Byron. In fact Hunt did not
observe the cremation, he remained in his carriage.

Two other Englishmen were
with Shelley on the boat. One was a retired Navy officer, Edward Ellerker
Williams; the other was a boatboy, Charles Vivien.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
The boat was found ten miles (16 km)
offshore, and it was suggested that one side of the boat had been rammed and
staved in by a much stronger vessel. However, the liferaft was unused and still
attached to the boat. The bodies were found completely clothed, including
boots.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s
sculpture in the Shelley
Memorial at University
College, Oxford

In his 'Recollections of the
Last Days of Shelley and Byron', Trelawny noted that the shirt in which
Williams's body was clad was 'partly drawn over the head, as if the wearer had
been in the act of taking it off [...] and [he was missing] one boot,
indicating also that he had attempted to strip.' Trelawny also relates a
supposed deathbed confession by an Italian fisherman who claimed to have rammed
Shelley's boat in order to rob him, a plan confounded by the rapid sinking of
the vessel.

Shelley's body washed ashore
and later, in keeping with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
regulations, was [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] on the beach near [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. The day after the
news of his death reached England,
the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] newspaper The
Courier gloated: "Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been
drowned, now he knows whether there is God or no."^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
A reclining statue of Shelley's body, depicting him washed up onto the shore,
created by sculptor Edward
Onslow Ford at the behest of Shelley's daughter-in-law, Jane, Lady Shelley,
is the centerpiece of the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at University
College, Oxford. An 1889 painting by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], The Funeral of
Shelley (also known as The Cremation of Shelley), contains
inaccuracies. In pre-Victorian times it was English custom that women would not
attend funerals for health reasons. Mary Shelley did not attend but was
featured in the painting, kneeling at the left-hand side. Leigh Hunt stayed in
the carriage during the ceremony but is also pictured. Also, Trelawney, in his
account of the recovery of Shelley's body, records that "the face and hands,
and parts of the body not protected by the dress, were fleshless," and by
the time that the party returned to the beach for the cremation, the body was
even further decomposed. In his graphic account of the cremation, he writes of
Byron being unable to face the scene, and withdrawing to the beach.

Shelley's heart was snatched
from the funeral pyre by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]; Mary Shelley kept it for the rest
of her life, and it was later buried with the body of Sir Percy Florence
Shelley, their son.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Shelley's ashes were interred in the Protestant
Cemetery, Rome, near an ancient [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in the city walls. His grave bears the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] inscription, Cor Cordium
("Heart of Hearts"), and, in reference to his death at sea, a few
lines of "Ariel's Song" from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]:
"Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into
something rich and strange." The grave site is the second in the cemetery.
Some weeks after Shelley had been put to rest, Trelawny had come to Rome, had not liked his
friend's position among a number of other graves, and had purchased what seemed
to him a better plot near the old wall. The ashes were exhumed and moved to
their present location. Trelawny had purchased the adjacent plot, and over
sixty years later his remains were placed there.

Shelley was eventually
memorialized at the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
along with his old friends, Lord Byron and John Keats.