Nhà thơ Percy Bysshe Shelley
Tình Yêu Là Gì?
Nhà thơ Percy Bysshe Shelley trong một tiểu luận triết học về tình yêu, viết:
“Tình yêu là gì? Hãy hỏi người đang sống: đời là gì. Hãy hỏi người đang cầu nguyện: Thượng Đế là ai.
“Tình yêu là gì? Hãy hỏi người đang sống: đời là gì. Hãy hỏi người đang cầu nguyện: Thượng Đế là ai.
Tôi
không biết được điều gì ở trong những người khác, thậm chí ở bạn, người
mà tôi đang nói cùng. Theo dáng vẻ bề ngoài, tôi thấy rằng những người
này giống với tôi nhưng khi tôi quyết định tìm ra một cái gì đấy chung
với tất cả mọi người và mở cõi lòng mình với họ thì hóa ra tôi đang nói
bằng một ngôn ngữ mà họ không hiểu được, giống như mình bị lạc vào một
xứ sở hoang vu và xa lạ. Tôi càng có thêm kinh nghiệm thì càng cảm thấy
khoảng cách và càng thấy xa hơn những gì xưa đồng điệu. Đem phân chia
tâm hồn ra phần rạo rực, xốn xang và phần nhu nhược, yếu hèn, bằng vẻ
dịu dàng tôi đi tìm sự nhận thức nhưng chỉ gặp sự chống trả quyết liệt
và chịu nếm mùi cay đắng.
Và
bạn sẽ hỏi, tình yêu là gì? Đó là sự ham mê khủng khiếp đối với tất cả
những gì ta hình dung ra, những gì ta sợ, những gì ta hy vọng ở bên
ngoài bản thân ta, khi ta nhận ra trong mình có một khoảng trống không
được thỏa mãn và ta khát khao thức dậy ở mọi người một cái điều gì chung
mà ta đang chịu đựng. Nếu ta bàn luận – thì ta mong được trở thành
người làm chứng; nếu ta tưởng tượng – thì ta mong sự hình dung của mình
cũng sẽ nảy ra trong đầu óc người khác; nếu ta cảm xúc – thì ta muốn tâm
hồn người khác sẽ rung nhịp cùng với tâm hồn này, để cho đôi mắt của ai
sẽ cháy lên khi bắt gặp, và sẽ rót ánh sáng của mình vào ánh sáng này,
để cho bờ môi cháy bừng bằng máu nóng của con tim ai mà không gặp phải
bờ môi giá băng và bất động. Tình yêu là thế đấy. Đó là mối liên hệ và
là điều bí ẩn kết gắn một con người không chỉ với một con người mà với
tất cả những gì sống động. Ta đi qua cuộc đời, và từ khoảnh khắc đầu
tiên có điều gì đấy ở trong ta mãnh liệt khát khao một điều gì tương tự.
Điều này, có lẽ, cũng giống như con trẻ hướng về vú mẹ, ta càng lớn lên
thì niềm khát khao này cũng lớn lên. Trong cái “tôi” của tâm hồn, ta
mang máng nhìn ra cái bản sao tí hon của ta nhưng ta coi thường và đoán
xét nó, cái hình mẫu lý tưởng mà ta có thể hình dung ra trong bản chất
của con người. Không chỉ diện mạo bề ngoài mà tất cả những bộ phận cấu
thành nên con người ta, tấm gương phản chiếu chỉ những hình ảnh sáng sủa
và thanh khiết; hồn trong hồn ta vẽ ra thiên đàng của mình bằng một
vòng ma thuật mà không cái ác hay sự buồn rầu, đau khổ nào có thể đi
qua. Ta thường so sánh thiên đàng này với tất cả tình cảm của mình và
ước mong tìm ra một cái gì tương tự. Đi tìm cái tương đồng của mình; đi
tìm một đầu óc thông minh, biết đánh giá; tìm một sự hình dung có khả
năng hiểu rõ những cung bậc tinh tế, khó nắm bắt của tình cảm mà ta nâng
niu, trìu mến; một thể xác cùng biết rung một nhịp như bộ dây của hai
cây đàn hòa theo giọng ca tuyệt vời của người ca sĩ; tìm ra tất cả trong
một sự tương đồng, đó là điều mà tâm hồn ta khao khát – đấy là cái mục
đích không nhìn ra và không thể đạt đến, là cái mà tình yêu khát khao
hướng đến. Để đạt được mục đích này, tâm hồn buộc ta nắm bắt dù chỉ là
cái bóng nhỏ nhoi của con người, mà nếu thiếu, thì con tim không hề yên
nghỉ. Bởi thế, khi ở trong tình trạng cô đơn hoặc trong cái hoang vắng
giữa những người không hiểu ta, ta yêu cỏ, yêu hoa, yêu bầu trời, yêu
dòng nước chảy. Trong cái run rẩy của chiếc lá mùa xuân, trong bầu không
khí màu xanh ta tìm ra sự hoà nhịp thầm kín với con tim mình. Trong
ngọn gió không lời có tài hùng biện, trong tiếng rì rào giữa những cây
lau có khúc nhạc du dương êm ái và có một mối liên hệ không nhìn thấy
của chúng với một cái gì đó ở trong ta, làm nảy sinh ra trong hồn ta một
điều gì mừng rỡ, bao trùm lấy hơi thở; khơi ra dòng lệ thật đằm thắm,
dịu dàng, giống như lòng tự hào về đất nước, quê hương hay giọng nói của
người yêu dấu chỉ nói cho một mình ta. Sterne* nói rằng, giá mà ông một
mình giữa bãi hoang thì có lẽ ông đã yêu một cây thông nào đấy. Khi
lòng khát khao này, khả năng này chết đi thì con người sẽ trở thành một
quan tài sống: chỉ còn lại cái vỏ mà trước đây đã từng có”.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Percy Bysshe Shelley | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Shelley by Alfred Clint (1819)
|
|
| Born | 4 August 1792 Field Place, Horsham, Sussex, England[1] |
| Died | 8 July 1822 (aged 29) Lerici, Kingdom of Sardinia (now Italy) |
| Occupation | Poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist |
| Literary movement | Romanticism |
| Signature |  |
Shelley is perhaps best known for such classic poems as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works include long, visionary poems such as Queen Mab (later reworked as The Daemon of the World), Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs, the unfinished work The Triumph of Life; and the visionary verse dramas The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820).
His close circle of admirers, however, included some progressive thinkers of the day, including his future father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin. Though Shelley's poetry and prose output remained steady throughout his life, most publishers and journals declined to publish his work for fear of being arrested themselves for blasphemy or sedition. Shelley did not live to see success and influence, although these reach down to the present day not only in literature, but in major movements in social and political thought.
Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, Karl Marx, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan.[3] Henry David Thoreau's civil disobedience was apparently influenced by Shelley's non-violence in protest and political action.
Contents
Life
Education
The eldest legitimate son of Sir Timothy Shelley — a Whig Member of Parliament for Horsham from 1790-92 and for Shoreham from 1806-12; and his wife Elizabeth Pilford, a Sussex landowner, Shelley was born 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Broadbridge Heath, near Horsham, West Sussex, England. He had four younger sisters and one much younger brother. He received his early education at home, tutored by the Reverend Evan Edwards of nearby Warnham. 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.[4]In 1802, he entered the Syon House Academy of Brentford, Middlesex. In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, where he fared poorly, and was subjected to an almost daily mob torment at around noon by older boys, who aptly called these incidents "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.[5] This daily misery could be attributed to Shelley's refusal to take part in fagging and his indifference towards games and other youthful activities. Because of these peculiarities he acquired the nickname "Mad Shelley".[6] Shelley possessed a keen interest in science at Eton, which he would often apply to cause a surprising amount of mischief for a boy considered to be so sensible. Shelley would often use a frictional electric machine to charge the door handle of his room, much to the amusement of his friends. His friends were particularly amused when his gentlemanly tutor, Mr Bethell, in attempting to enter his room, was alarmed at the noise of the electric shocks, despite Shelley's dutiful protestations.[7] His mischievous side was again demonstrated by 'his last bit of naughtiness at school',[6] which was to blow up a tree on Eton's South Meadow with gunpowder. Despite these jocular incidents, a contemporary of Shelley, W.H. Merie, recalls that Shelley made no friends at Eton, although he did seek a kindred spirit without success.
On 10 April 1810, he matriculated 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, Zastrozzi (1810), in which he vented his early atheistic worldview 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 (ostensibly burlesque but quite subversive), Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, with Thomas Jefferson Hogg.
In 1811, Shelley published his second Gothic novel, St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, and a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism. The 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 expulsion 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").[8] 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, on 28 August 1811, the 19-year-old Shelley eloped to Scotland with the 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, a pupil at the same boarding school as Shelley's sisters, whom his father had forbidden him to see. Harriet Westbrook had been writing Shelley passionate letters threatening to kill herself because of her unhappiness at the school and at home. Shelley, heartbroken after the failure of his romance with his cousin, Harriet Grove, cut off from his mother and sisters, and convinced he had not long to live, impulsively decided to rescue Harriet Westbrook and make her his beneficiary.[9] Harriet Westbrook's 28-year-old sister Eliza, to whom Harriet was very close, appears to have encouraged the young girl's infatuation with the future baronet.[10] The Westbrooks pretended to disapprove but secretly encouraged the elopement. Sir Timothy Shelley, however, outraged that his son had married beneath him (Harriet's father, though prosperous, had kept a tavern) revoked Shelley's allowance and refused ever to receive the couple at Field Place. Shelley invited his friend Hogg to share his ménage but asked him to leave when Hogg made advances to Harriet. Harriet also insisted that her sister Eliza, whom Shelley detested, live with them. Shelley was also at this time increasingly involved in an intense platonic relationship with Elizabeth Hitchener, a 28-year-old unmarried schoolteacher of advanced views, with whom he had been corresponding. Hitchener, whom Shelley called the "sister of my soul" and "my second self",[11] became his muse and confidante in the writing of his philosophical poem Queen Mab, a Utopian allegory.
Shelley was increasingly unhappy in his marriage to Harriet and particularly resented the influence of her older sister Eliza, who discouraged Harriet from breastfeeding their baby daughter (Elizabeth Ianthe Shelley [1813–76]). Shelley accused Harriet of having married him for his money. Craving more intellectual female companionship, he began spending more time away from home, among other things, studying Italian with Cornelia Turner and visiting the home and bookshop of William Godwin. Eliza and Harriet moved back with their parents.
On 28 July 1814, Shelley abandoned Harriet, now pregnant with their son Charles (November 1814 – 1826) and (in imitation of the hero of one of Godwin's novels) he ran away to Switzerland with Mary, then 16, inviting her stepsister Claire Clairmont (also 16) along because she could speak French. The older sister Fanny, was left behind, to her great dismay, for she, too, had fallen in love with Shelley. The three sailed to Europe, and made their way across France to Switzerland on foot, reading aloud from the works of Rousseau, Shakespeare, and Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (an account of their travels was subsequently published by the Shelleys).
Byron
In mid-1816, Shelley and Mary made a second trip to Switzerland. They were prompted to do this by Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, who, in competition with her sister, had initiated a liaison with Lord Byron the previous April just before his self-exile on the continent. Byron's interest in her had waned and Claire used the opportunity of introducing him to the Shelleys to act as bait to lure him to Geneva. The Shelleys and Byron rented neighbouring houses on the shores of Lake Geneva. 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.[20] A tour of Chamonix in the French Alps inspired Mont Blanc, a poem in which Shelley claims to have pondered questions of historical inevitability (determinism) and the relationship between the human mind and external nature. Shelley also encouraged Byron to begin an epic poem on a contemporary subject, advice that resulted in Byron's composition of Don Juan. In 1817, Claire gave birth to a daughter by Byron, Alba, later renamed Allegra, whom Shelley offered to support, making provisions for her and for Claire in his will.Two suicides and a second marriage
After Shelley and Mary's return to England, Fanny Imlay, Mary's half-sister and Claire's stepsister, despondent over her exclusion from the Shelley household and perhaps unhappy at being omitted from Shelley's will, travelled from Godwin's household in London to kill herself in Wales in early October. On 10 December 1816, the body of Shelley's estranged wife Harriet was found in an advanced state of pregnancy, drowned in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London. Shelley had generously provided for her and their children in his will and had given her a monthly allowance as had her father. It is thought that Harriet, who had left her children with her sister Eliza and had been living alone under the name of Harriet Smith, mistakenly believed herself to have been abandoned by her new lover, 36-year-old, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Maxwell, who had been deployed abroad, after a landlady refused to forward his letters to her.[21] 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 and also to placate Godwin, who had coldly refused to speak to his daughter for two years, and who now received the couple. The courts, however, awarded custody of Shelley and Harriet's children to foster parents.[22]The Shelleys took up residence in the village of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where a friend of Percy's, Thomas Love Peacock, lived. Shelley took part in the literary circle that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and during this period he met John Keats. 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 nom de plume, "The Hermit of Marlow." On Boxing Day 1817, presumably prompted by travellers' reports of Belzoni's success (where the French had failed) in removing the 'half sunk and shattered visage' of the so-called 'Young Memnon' from the Ramesseum at Thebes, Shelley and his friend Horace Smith began a poem each about the Memnon or 'Ozymandias,' Diodorus's 'King of Kings' who in an inscription on the base of his statue challenged all comers to 'surpass my works'. Within four months of the publication of Ozymandias (or Rameses II) his seven-and-a-quarter ton bust arrived in London, just too late for Shelley to have seen it.[23]
Italy
A baby girl, Elena Adelaide Shelley, was born on 27 December 1818 in Naples, 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.[24] 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 between various Italian cities during these years; in later 1818 they were living in Florence, in a pensione on the Via Valfonda. This street now runs alongside Florence's railway 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. They then moved to Pisa, largely at the suggestion of its resident Margaret King, who, as a former pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft, took a maternal interest in the younger Mary and her companions. This "no nonsense grande dame"[25] and her common-law husband George William Tighe inspired the poet with "a new-found sense of radicalism". Tighe was an agricultural theorist, and provided the younger man with a great deal of material on chemistry, biology and statistics.[26]
Shelley completed Prometheus Unbound in Rome, and he spent mid-1819 writing a tragedy, The Cenci, in Leghorn (Livorno). 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 probably his best-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 John Keats' 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 Adonais.
In 1821, Shelley met Edward Ellerker Williams, a British naval officer, and his wife Jane Williams. Shelley developed a very strong affection towards Jane and addressed a number of poems to her. 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 Leigh Hunt, 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 Blackwood's Magazine and The Quarterly Review.
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, Leno, consists the difference, Shelley would have handed me the drum and allowed me to help myself."[27]
Death
On 8 July 1822, less than a month before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm while sailing back from Leghorn (Livorno) to Lerici in his schooner, Don Juan. He was returning from having set up The Liberal with the newly arrived Leigh Hunt. The name "Don Juan", 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 Ariel, which annoyed Byron, who forced the painting of the words "Don Juan" on the mainsail. The vessel, an open boat, was custom-built in Genoa 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.[28]Some believed his death was not accidental, that Shelley was depressed in those days and wanted to die. Others said that he did not know how to navigate; or that pirates mistook the boat for Byron's and attacked him; or even more fantastical stories.[28][29] There is a small amount of material, though scattered and contradictory, describing that Shelley may have been murdered for political reasons. Previously, at Plas Tan-Yr-Allt, the Regency house he rented at Tremadog, near Porthmadog, 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.[30] Shelley, who was in financial difficulties, left forthwith leaving rent unpaid and without contributing to the fund to support the house owner, William Madocks; this may provide another, more plausible explanation for this story.
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 to rob him, a plan confounded by the rapid sinking of the vessel.
A memorial was eventually created for Shelley at the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey, along with his old friends, Lord Byron and John Keats.
Shelley's heart
Shelley's widow Mary bought a cliff-top home at Boscombe, Bournemouth in 1851. She intended to live there with her son, Percy, and his wife Jane, and had her own parents moved to an underground mausoleum in the town. The property is now known as Shelley Manor. When Lady Jane Shelley was to be buried in the family vault, it was discovered that in her copy of Adonaïs was an envelope containing ashes, which she had identified as belonging to Shelley the poet.[34] The family had preserved the story that when Shelley's body had been burned, his friend Edward Trelawny had snatched the whole heart from the pyre.[33][35][36] These same accounts claim that the heart was buried with Shelley's son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley. All accounts agree, however, that the remains now lie in the vault in the churchyard of St Peter's Church, Bournemouth.For several years in the 20th century some of Trelawny's collection of Shelley ephemera, including a painting of Shelley as a child, a jacket, and a lock of his hair were on display in "The Shelley Rooms", a small museum at Shelley Manor. When the museum finally closed, these items were returned to Lord Abinger, who descends from a niece of Lady Jane Shelley.
Family history
Ancestry
Henry became father to younger Henry Shelley. This younger Henry had at least three sons. The youngest of them Richard Shelley was later married to Joan Fuste, daughter of John Fuste from Itchingfield, near Horsham, West Sussex. Their grandson John Shelley of Fen Place, Turners Hill, West Sussex, was married himself to Helen Bysshe, daughter of Roger Bysshe. Their son Timothy Shelley of Fen Place (born c. 1700) married widow Johanna Plum from New York City. Timothy and Johanna were the great-grandparents of Percy.Family
Percy was born to Sir Timothy Shelley (7 September 1753 – 24 April 1844) and his wife Elizabeth Pilfold following their marriage in October 1791. His father was son and heir to Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring (21 June 1731 – 6 January 1815) by his wife Mary Catherine Michell (d. 7 November 1760). His mother was daughter of Charles Pilfold of Effingham. Through his paternal grandmother, Percy was a great-grandson to Reverend Theobald Michell of Horsham. Through his maternal lineage, he was a cousin of Thomas Medwin — a childhood friend and Shelley's biographer[37]Percy was the eldest of six children. His younger siblings were:
- John Shelley of Avington House (15 March 1806 – 11 November 1866; married on 24 March 1827 Elizabeth Bowen (d. 28 November 1889));
- Mary Shelley (NB. not to be confused with his wife);
- Elizabeth Shelley (d. 1831);
- Hellen Shelley (d. 10 May 1885);
- Margaret Shelley (d. 9 July 1887).
Descendants
Three children survived Shelley: Ianthe and Charles, his daughter and son by Harriet; and Percy Florence, his son by Mary. Charles, who suffered from tuberculosis, died in 1826 after being struck by lightning during a rainstorm. Percy Florence, who eventually inherited the baronetcy in 1844, died without children. The only lineal descendants of the poet are therefore the children of Ianthe.Ianthe Eliza Shelley was married in 1837 to Edward Jeffries Esdaile of Cothelstone Manor. The marriage resulted in the birth of one daughter, Una Deane Esdaile, who married Campbell Carlston Thurston[39] and had two children by him. Several members of the Scarlett family were born at Percy Florence's seaside home "Boscombe Manor" in Bournemouth. The 1891 census shows Lady Shelley living at Boscombe Manor with several great nephews.
Idealism
Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong disapproving voice, made him an authoritative and much-denigrated figure during his life and afterward. He became an idol of the next two or three or even four generations of poets, including the important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as Lord Byron, Henry David Thoreau, W. B. Yeats, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, and poets in other languages such as Jan Kasprowicz,Rabindranath Tagore, Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy.Nonviolence
Henry David Thoreau's civil disobedience and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's passive resistance were influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action.[40] It is known that Gandhi would often quote Shelley's Masque of Anarchy,[41] which has been called "perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance."[42]Vegetarianism
Shelley wrote several essays on the subject of vegetarianism, the most prominent of which were "A Vindication of Natural Diet" (1813) and "On the Vegetable System of Diet".[43][44]Shelley, in heartfelt dedication to sentient beings, wrote:[45] "If the use of animal food be, in consequence, subversive to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the injustice and the barbarity which is exercised toward these miserable victims. They are called into existence by human artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated, their social feelings outraged. It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery"; "Never again may blood of bird or beast/ Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,/ To the pure skies in accusation steaming"; and "It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust."[45] In Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813) he wrote about the change to a vegetarian diet: "And man ... no longer now/ He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,/ And horribly devours his mangled flesh."[46]
Shelley was a strong advocate for social justice for the "lower classes". He witnessed many of the same mistreatments occurring in the domestication and slaughtering of animals, and he became a fighter for the rights of all living creatures that he saw being treated unjustly.[45]
Legacy
Shelley's mainstream following did not develop until a generation after his death, unlike Lord Byron, who was popular among all classes during his lifetime despite his radical views. For decades after his death, Shelley was mainly appreciated by only the major Victorian poets, the pre-Raphaelites, the socialists and the labour movement. One reason for this was the extreme discomfort with Shelley's political radicalism which led popular anthologists to confine Shelley's reputation to the relatively sanitised "magazine" pieces such as "Ozymandias" or "Lines to an Indian Air".
He was admired by C. S. Lewis,[47] Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, Gregory Corso, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Isadora Duncan,[3] Upton Sinclair,[48] Gabriele d'Annunzio and W. B. Yeats.[49] Samuel Barber, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Roger Quilter, Howard Skempton, John Vanderslice and Ralph Vaughan Williams composed music based on his poems.
Critics such as Matthew Arnold endeavoured to rewrite Shelley's legacy to make him seem a lyricist and a dilettante who had no serious intellectual position and whose longer poems were not worth study. Matthew Arnold famously described Shelley as a "beautiful and ineffectual angel". This position contrasted strongly with the judgement of the previous generation who knew Shelley as a sceptic and radical.
Many of Shelley's works remained unpublished or little known after his death, with longer pieces such as A Philosophical View of Reform existing only in manuscript till the 1920s. This contributed to the Victorian idea of him as a minor lyricist. With the inception of formal literary studies in the early twentieth century and the slow rediscovery and re-evaluation of his oeuvre by scholars such as Kenneth Neill Cameron, Donald H. Reiman and Harold Bloom, the modern idea of Shelley could not be more different.
Paul Foot, in his Red Shelley, has documented the pivotal role Shelley's works – especially Queen Mab — have played in the genesis of British radicalism. Although Shelley's works were banned from respectable Victorian households, his political writings were pirated by men such as Richard Carlile who regularly went to jail for printing "seditious and blasphemous libel" (i.e. material proscribed by the government), and these cheap pirate editions reached hundreds of activists and workers throughout the nineteenth century.[50]
In other countries such as India, Shelley's works both in the original and in translation have influenced poets such as Rabindranath Tagore[51] and Jibanananda Das. A pirated copy of Prometheus Unbound dated 1835 is said to have been seized in that year by customs at Bombay.
The 1970s and 1980s Thames Television sitcom Shelley made many references to the poet.
Paul Johnson, in his book Intellectuals,[52] describes Shelley in a chapter titled "Shelley or the Heartlessness of Ideas ". In the book Johnson describes Shelley as an amoral person, who by borrowing money which he did not intend to return, and by seducing young innocent women who fell for him, destroyed the lives of everybody with whom he had interacted, including his own.
In 2005 the University of Delaware Press published an extensive two-volume biography by James Bieri. In 2008 the Johns Hopkins University Press published Bieri's 856-page one-volume biography, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography.
The rediscovery in mid-2006 of Shelley's long-lost "Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things", as noted above and in footnote 6 below, has not been followed up by the work's being published or being made generally available on the internet or anywhere else. At present (November 2009), its whereabouts is not generally known. An analysis of the poem by the only person known to have examined the whole work appeared in the Times Literary Supplement: H. R. Woudhuysen, "Shelley's Fantastic Prank", 12 July 2006.[53]
In 2007, John Lauritsen published his book The Man Who Wrote "Frankenstein"[54] in which he argued that Percy Bysshe Shelley's contributions to the novel were much more extensive than had previously been assumed. It has been known and not disputed that Shelley wrote the Preface – although uncredited – and that he contributed at least 4,000–5,000 words to the novel. Lauritsen sought to show that Shelley was the primary author of the novel.
In 2008, Percy Bysshe Shelley was credited as the co-author of Frankenstein by Charles E. Robinson in a new edition of the novel entitled The Original Frankenstein published by the Bodleian Library in Oxford and by Random House in the US[55] Charles E. Robinson determined that Percy Bysshe Shelley was the co-author of the novel: "He made very significant changes in words, themes and style. The book should now be credited as 'by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley'."[56]
In popular culture
- Shelley is believed to have been the model for Marmion Herbert, one of two male protagonists in Benjamin Disraeli's 1837 novel Venetia; the other, Lord Cadurcis, being based on Lord Byron.[57]
- Henry James' 1888 novella, The Aspern Papers relates a struggle to obtain some letters by Shelley years after his death. It was made into a stage play and an opera.
- Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters (1915) includes a poem Percy Bysshe Shelley[58] as the namesake of the speaker, whose ashes "were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius / Somewhere near Rome."
- Howard Brenton's play, Bloody Poetry (1984), explores the complex relationships and rivalries between Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Byron.
- Shelley's cremation at Viareggio and the removal of his heart by Trelawny are described in Tennessee Williams's 1953 play Camino Real by a fictional Lord Byron.
- A visit to Lord Byron's estate by Shelley and Mary Shelley is the setting for Ken Russell's 1986 film Gothic.
- The film Haunted Summer has a similar theme to Gothic and is also set in 1816.
- Shelley's poems The Revolt of Islam and Indian Serenade are recited in Sally Potter's film Orlando
- A fictional Shelley befriends cavalry officer Matthew Hervey in the 2002 Allan Mallinson novel A Call to Arms.
- Novelist Julian Rathbone fictionalises Shelley in A Very English Agent (2002), wherein a 19th-century government spy tampers with the poet's boat, causing his death.
- Shelley appears as himself in Peter Ackroyd's novel The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008).
- Shelley was played by Ben Lamb in Shared Experience's 2012 production, "Mary Shelley" by Helen Edmundson, at the Tricycle Theatre, London.[59][60]
Major works
- (1810) The Wandering Jew (published 1877)[61]
- (1810) Zastrozzi
- (1810) Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire
- (1810) Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson: Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of That Noted Female Who Attempted the Life of the King in 1786
- (1811) St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian
- (1811) The Necessity of Atheism
- (1812) The Devil's Walk: A Ballad
- (1813) Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem
- (1814) A Refutation of Deism: In a Dialogue
- (1815) Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude
- (1815) Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit (chapbook)
- (1816) The Daemon of the World
- (1816) Mont Blanc
- (1817) Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (text)
- (1817) Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century
- (1817) The Revolt of Islam, A Poem, in Twelve Cantos
- (1817) History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland (with Mary Shelley)
- (1818) Ozymandias (text)
- (1818) The Banquet (or The Symposium) by Plato, translation from Greek into English[62]
- (1818) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (Preface)[63][64][65]
- (1818) Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue
- (1818) Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, October 1818
- (1819) The Cenci, A Tragedy, in Five Acts
- (1819) Ode to the West Wind (text)
- (1819) The Masque of Anarchy
- (1819) Men of England
- (1819) England in 1819
- (1819) A Philosophical View of Reform (published in 1920)
- (1819) Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation
- (1820) Peter Bell the Third (published in 1839)
- (1820) Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts
- (1820) To a Skylark
- (1820) The Cloud
- (1820) Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts
- (1820) The Witch of Atlas (published in 1824)
- (1821) Adonaïs
- (1821) Ion by Plato, translation from Greek into English
- (1821) A Defence of Poetry (first published in 1840)
- (1821) Epipsychidion
- (1822) Hellas, A Lyrical Drama
- (1822) The Triumph of Life (unfinished, published in 1824)
Short prose works
- "The Assassins, A Fragment of a Romance" (1814)
- "The Coliseum, A Fragment" (1817)
- "The Elysian Fields: A Lucianic Fragment"
- "Una Favola (A Fable)" (1819, originally in Italian)
Essays
- Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things (1811)
- The Necessity of Atheism (1811)
- Declaration of Rights (1812)
- A Letter to Lord Ellenborough (1812)
- A Defence of Poetry
- A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)
- On the Vegetable System of Diet (1814–1815; published 1929)
- On Love (1818)
- On Life (1819)
- On a Future State (1815)
- On The Punishment of Death
- Speculations on Metaphysics
- Speculations on Morals
- On Christianity
- On the Literature, the Arts and the Manners of the Athenians
- On The Symposium, or Preface to The Banquet Of Plato
- On Friendship
- On Frankenstein
Collaborations with Mary Shelley
- (1817) History of a Six Weeks' Tour
- (1818) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus[66][67]
- (1820) Proserpine
- (1820) Midas
See also
- List of peace activists
- Bolesław Prus#Later years (use of Shelley's tomb inscription on Prus's tomb) (Polish)
- Godwin–Shelley family tree
- Rising Universe – A water sculpture celebrating the life of Shelley near his birthplace in Horsham, Sussex
References
Notes- Jump up ^ The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Medwin (London, 1847), p. 323
- Jump up ^ Bysshe is pronounced as if written bish.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Isadora Duncan, "My Life ", W. W. Norton & Co.,1996, pp. 15, 134.
- Jump up ^ The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Medwin (London, 1847)
- Jump up ^ Ian Gilmour, Byron and Shelley: The Making of the Poets, New York: Carol & Graf Publishers, 2002, pp. 96–97.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Bieri, James, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography: Youth's Unextinguished Fire, 1792-1816, University of Delaware Press, 2004, p. 86
- Jump up ^ Cory, William, "Shelley at Eton", The Shelley Society's Note-Book, part 1, 1888, pp. 14-15.
- Jump up ^ India Knight. "Article in the ''Times'' Online". The Times. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
- Jump up ^ James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) p.73.
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), pp. 154–176.
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), p. 195.
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), p. 185.
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), pp. 188 and 189. For comparison, Jane Austen, in her novel Pride and Prejudice, set during this period, describes Mr. Darcy's annual income as 10,000 £. See i Brad deLong's discussion of this in "How Rich is Mr. Darcy?"
- Jump up ^ "The Shelley 'fortune' promised fiscal relief for Godwin in accordance with the tenets of equitable distribution of wealth advocated in Political Justice and subscribed to by his new pupil" (Bieri [2008], p. 189).
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), p. 256. "Responding to Shelly's willingness to compromise, the Duke brought father and son together at a large party. According to Hogg, the Earl of Oxford pointed to Timothy and asked a pleased Shelley, 'Pray, who is that very strange old man . . . who talks so much, so loudly, and in so extraordinary a manner, and all about himself.' Shelley identified his father and walked home with the Earl" (Bieri [2008], pp. 256–57).
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), p. 199.
- Jump up ^ An advertisement in the Dublin Evening Post, quoted in Bieri (2008), p. 200.
- Jump up ^ Seymour, 458.
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), p. 285.
- Jump up ^ Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Includes Adonais, Daemon of the World, Peter Bell the Third, The Witch of Atlas, A Defence of Poetry, and 3 Complete Volumes of works Google Ebooks volume 2
- Jump up ^ Bieri (2008), p. 364.
- Jump up ^ For details of Harriet's suicide and Shelley's remarriage see Bieri (2008), pp. 360–69.
- Jump up ^ Edward Chaney. 'Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Religion', Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines, eds. M. Ascari and A. Corrado. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006, pp. 39–69. The bust had already been described as 'certainly the most beautiful and perfect piece of Egyptian sculpture that can be seen throughout the whole country', by W.R. Hamilton, in his remarkable Aegyptiaca in 1809. Had Shelley known how celebrated both Rameses and his bust/s would become he might have chosen a better example of Nemesis.
- Jump up ^ Benita Eisler, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame 1999: p668.
- Jump up ^ Emily W. Sunstein,Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality (New York: Little Brown, 1989), p. 175.
- Jump up ^ Timothy Morton, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, 1994), p. 232.
- Jump up ^ John Bedford Leno. The Aftermath with Autobiography of the Author. London: Reeves & Turner 1892.
- ^ Jump up to: a b "The Sinking of the Don Juan" by Donald Prell, Keats-Shelley journal, Vol. LVI, 2007, pp 136–154
- Jump up ^ StClair, William, Trelawny, the Incurable Romancer, New York: The Vanguard Press, 1977
- Jump up ^ Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975).
- Jump up ^ StClair and Prell
- Jump up ^ Edmund Blunden, Shelley, A Life Story, Oxford University Press, 1965.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Trelawny, E. J. Recollections of the last days of Shelley and Byron, p. 137, Ticknor and Fields, Boston, 1858
- Jump up ^ We Who Are of His Family And Bear His Name, by W. L. Jacobs
- Jump up ^ Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 1955 X(1):114–116; doi:10.1093/jhmas/X.1.114-b
- Jump up ^ "Celebrity Body Parts: 10 Priceless Pieces of History". Foxnews.com. 20 July 2008. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
- Jump up ^ Ernest J Lovell Jr, Captain Medwin: Friend of Byron and Shelley,University of Texas 1962
- Jump up ^ The Life and Times of Captain John Pilfold, CB,RN; Hawkins, Desmond, Horsham Museum Society, 1998
- Jump up ^ The Peerage
- Jump up ^ Thomas Weber, "Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor," Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 28–29.
- Jump up ^ Thomas Weber, "Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor," Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 28.
- Jump up ^ [1]
- Jump up ^ Spencer, Colin. The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. Great Britain: Hartnolls Ltd, Bodmin. 1993, pp 244–45.
- Jump up ^ Morton, Timothy, "Joseph Ritson, Percy Shelley and the Making of Romantic Vegetarianism." Romanticism, Vol. 12, Issue 1, 2006. pp. 52–61.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Shelley, Percy Bysshe, "A Vindication of Natural Diet;" London: Smith & Davy. 1813, pp. 1–36.
- Jump up ^ Preece, Rod. Sins of the Flesh: A History of Ethical Vegetarian Thought. Vancouver, BC, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2008.
- Jump up ^ "Poems of the Week". Themediadrome.com. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
- Jump up ^ Upton Sinclair, "My Lifetime in Letters," Univ of Missouri Press, 1960.
- Jump up ^ Yeats: The Philosophy of Shelley's Poetry, 1900.
- Jump up ^ Some details on this can also be found in William St Clair's The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: CUP, 2005) and Richard D. Altick's The English Common Reader (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1998) 2nd. edn.
- Jump up ^ Tagore Rabindranath biography. Bookrags.com (2 November 2010).
- Jump up ^ HarperCollins, 2007. First published in 1988
- Jump up ^ Woudhuysen, H. R. (12 July 2006). "Shelley's fantastic prank:An extraordinary pamphlet comes to light". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
- Jump up ^ John Lauritsen (2007). The Man Who Wrote "Frankenstein". Pagan Press. ISBN 0-943742-14-5.
- Jump up ^ Adams, Stephen. "Percy Bysshe Shelley helped wife Mary write Frankenstein, claims professor: Mary Shelley received extensive help in writing Frankenstein from her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading academic has claimed." The Daily Telegraph, 24 August 2008.
- Jump up ^ Shelley, Mary, with Percy Shelley. The Original Frankenstein. Edited with an Introduction by Charles E. Robinson. NY: Random House Vintage Classics, 2008. ISBN 978-0-307-47442-1
- Jump up ^ "Venetia Review, vol. 1 No. 1". "New Monthly Review (available online at Google books). 1837. p. 130. Retrieved 2007-10-11.
- Jump up ^ "Percy Bysshe Shelley". Spoon River Anthology. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
- Jump up ^ "Frazzled by fate, you can see how Frankenstein's author came up with her monster". Daily Mail. (19 June 2012).
- Jump up ^ Mary Shelley – Reviews – 15 Jun 2012. Whatsonstage.com (15 June 2012).
- Jump up ^ The Wandering Jew, A Poem in Four Cantos by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Written in 1810, published posthumously for the Shelley Society by Reeves and Turner, London 1877.
- Jump up ^ Plato, The Banquet, translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pagan Press, Provincetown 2001, ISBN 0-943742-12-9. Shelley's translation and his introductory essay, "A Discourse on the Manners of the Antient Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love", were first published unbowdlerized in 1931.
- Jump up ^ Shelley, Mary, with Percy Shelley. The Original Frankenstein. Edited and with an Introduction by Charles E. Robinson. Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 2008. ISBN 978-1-85124-396-9
- Jump up ^ Rosner, Victoria. "Co-Creating a Monster." The Huffington Post, 29 September 2009 "Random House recently published a new edition of the novel Frankenstein with a surprising change: Mary Shelley is no longer identified as the novel's sole author. Instead, the cover reads 'Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley).'
- Jump up ^ Brooks, Richard. "Frankenstein lives – thanks to the poet: Percy Shelley helped his wife Mary create the monster, a new book claims." The Sunday Times, 24 August 2008.
- Jump up ^ Wade, Phillip. "Shelley and the Miltonic Element in Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein''."'' Milton and the Romantics'', 2 (December, 1976), 23–25[dead link]. English.upenn.edu.
- Jump up ^ Grande, James. Review: The Original Frankenstein, By Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley ed Charles E Robinson. "To what extent did Percy Bysshe Shelley work on 'Frankenstein'? A new analysis reveals all.". The Independent' (16 November 2008).
- Edmund Blunden, Shelley: A Life Story, Viking Press, 1947.
- James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-8018-8861-1.
- Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1998.
- Cameron, Kenneth Neill. The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical. First Collier Books ed. New York: Collier Books, 1962, cop. 1950. 480 p.
- Edward Chaney. 'Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Religion', Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines, eds. M. Ascari and A. Corrado. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006, pp. 39–69.
- Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975.
- Meaker, M. J. Sudden Endings, 12 Profiles in Depth of Famous Suicides, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1964 p. 67–93: "The Deserted Wife: Harriet Westbrook Shelley".
- Maurois, André, Ariel ou la vie de Shelley, Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1923
- St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: A Biography of a Family. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.
- St Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Hay, Daisy. Young Romantics: the Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives, Bloomsbury, 2010.
- Owchar, Nick. "The Siren's Call: An epic poet as Mary Shelley's co-author. A new edition of 'Frankenstein' shows the contributions of her husband, Percy." Los Angeles Times, 11 October 2009.
- Rhodes, Jerry. "New paperback by UD professor offers two versions of Frankenstein tale." UDaily, University of Delaware, 30 September 2009. Charles E. Robinson: "These italics used for Percy Shelley's words make even more visible the half-dozen or so places where, in his own voice, he made substantial additions to the 'draft' of Frankenstein."
- Pratt, Lynda. "Who wrote the original Frankenstein? Mary Shelley created a monster out of her 'waking dream' – but was it her husband Percy who 'embodied its ideas and sentiments'?" The Sunday Times, 29 October 2008.
- Adams, Stephen. "Percy Bysshe Shelley helped wife Mary write Frankenstein, claims professor: Mary Shelley received extensive help in writing Frankenstein from her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading academic has claimed." Telegraph, 24 August 2008. Charles E. Robinson: "He made very significant changes in words, themes and style. The book should now be credited as 'by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley'."
- Shelley, Mary, with Percy Shelley. The Original Frankenstein. Edited with an Introduction by Charles E. Robinson. NY: Random House Vintage Classics, 2008. ISBN 978-0-307-47442-1
External links
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- Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Percy Bysshe Shelley in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Works by/about Percy Bysshe Shelley at Internet Archive
- Percy Bysshe Shelley by John Addington Symonds at Project Gutenberg
- Percy Bysshe Shelley Resources
- Selected Poems of Shelley
- A Guide to the Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript Material in the Pforzheimer Collection
- A talk on Shelley's politics (MP3) by Paul Foot: part 1, *part 2
- A pedigree of the Shelley family
- Plato's Ion, the Shelley translation
- The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Archival material relating to Percy Bysshe Shelley listed at the UK National Archives
- Portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- Online exhibition of Shelley's notebooks, objects, letters and drafts alongside artefacts of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and William Godwin
