175- ] English Literature

175- ] English Literature

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (/bɪʃ/ ⓘ BISH; born Aug. 4, 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, Eng.—died July 8, 1822, at sea off Livorno, Tuscany [Italy]) was a British writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets , whose passionate search for personal love and social justice was gradually channeled from overt actions into poems that rank with the greatest in the English language . A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets, including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem."

Shelley's reputation fluctuated during the 20th century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist, and materialist ideas in his work.[6][7] Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode to the West Wind" (1819), "To a Skylark" (1820), "Adonais" (1821), the philosophical essay "The Necessity of Atheism" (1811), which his friend T. J. Hogg may have co-authored, and the political ballad "The Mask of Anarchy" (1819). His other major works include the verse drama The Cenci (1819) and long poems such as Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1815), Julian and Maddalo (1819), Adonais (1821), Prometheus Unbound (1820)—widely considered his masterpiece—Hellas (1822), and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822).

Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues. Much of this poetry and prose was not published in his lifetime, or only published in expurgated form, due to the risk of prosecution for political and religious libel. From the 1820s, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist, and radical political circles, and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Bernard Shaw.

Shelley's life was marked by family crises, ill health, and a backlash against his atheism, political views, and defiance of social conventions. He went into permanent self-exile in Italy in 1818 and over the next four years produced what Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill call "some of the finest poetry of the Romantic period". His second wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of Frankenstein. He died in a boating accident in 1822 at age 29.

Life

Early life and education

Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Warnham, West Sussex, England . He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley (1753–1844), a Whig Member of Parliament for Horsham from 1790 to 1792 and for Shoreham between 1806 and 1812, and his wife, Elizabeth Pilfold (1763–1846), the daughter of a successful butcher. He had four younger sisters and one much younger brother.

Shelley was the heir to rich estates acquired by his grandfather, Bysshe (pronounced “Bish”) Shelley. Timothy Shelley, the poet’s father, was a weak, conventional man who was caught between an overbearing father and a rebellious son. The young Shelley was educated at Syon House Academy (1802–04) and then at Eton (1804–10), where he resisted physical and mental bullying by indulging in imaginative escapism and literary pranks.

Shelley's early childhood was sheltered and mostly happy. He was particularly close to his sisters and his mother, who encouraged him to hunt, fish and ride. At age six, he was sent to a day school run by the vicar of Warnham church, where he displayed an impressive memory and gift for languages.

In 1802 he entered the Syon House Academy of Brentford, Middlesex, where his cousin Thomas Medwin was a pupil. Shelley was bullied and unhappy at the school and sometimes responded with violent rage. He also began suffering from the nightmares, hallucinations and sleep walking that were to periodically affect him throughout his life. Shelley developed an interest in science which supplemented his voracious reading of tales of mystery, romance and the supernatural. During his holidays at Field Place, his sisters were often terrified at being subjected to his experiments with gunpowder, acids and electricity. Back at school he blew up a paling fence with gunpowder.

In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, a period which he later recalled with loathing. He was subjected to particularly severe mob bullying which the perpetrators called "Shelley-baits". A number of biographers and contemporaries have attributed the bullying to Shelley's aloofness, nonconformity and refusal to take part in fagging. His peculiarities and violent rages earned him the nickname "Mad Shelley". His interest in the occult and science continued, and contemporaries describe him giving an electric shock to a master, blowing up a tree stump with gunpowder and attempting to raise spirits with occult rituals. In his senior years, Shelley came under the influence of a part-time teacher, Dr James Lind, who encouraged his interest in the occult and introduced him to liberal and radical authors. Shelley also developed an interest in Plato and idealist philosophy which he pursued in later years through self-study. According to Richard Holmes, Shelley, by his leaving year, had gained a reputation as a classical scholar and a tolerated eccentric. Between the spring of 1810 and that of 1811, he published two Gothic novels and two volumes of juvenile verse. In the fall of 1810 Shelley entered University College, Oxford, where he enlisted his fellow student Thomas Jefferson Hogg as a disciple. But in March 1811, University College expelled both Shelley and Hogg for refusing to admit Shelley’s authorship of The Necessity of Atheism. Hogg submitted to his family, but Shelley refused to apologize.

In his last term at Eton, his first novel Zastrozzi appeared and he had established a following among his fellow pupils. Prior to enrolling for University College, Oxford, in October 1810, Shelley completed Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (written with his sister Elizabeth), the verse melodrama The Wandering Jew and the gothic novel St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (published 1811).

At Oxford Shelley attended few lectures, instead spending long hours reading and conducting scientific experiments in the laboratory he set up in his room. He met a fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who became his closest friend. Shelley became increasingly politicised under Hogg's influence, developing strong radical and anti-Christian views. Such views were dangerous in the reactionary political climate prevailing during Britain's war with Napoleonic France, and Shelley's father warned him against Hogg's influence.

In the winter of 1810–1811, Shelley published a series of anonymous political poems and tracts: Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, The Necessity of Atheism (written in collaboration with Hogg) and A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. Shelley mailed The Necessity of Atheism to all the bishops and heads of colleges at Oxford, and he was called to appear before the college's fellows, including the Dean, George Rowley. His refusal to answer questions put by college authorities regarding whether or not he authored the pamphlet resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on 25 March 1811, along with Hogg. Hearing of his son's expulsion, Shelley's father threatened to cut all contact with Shelley unless he agreed to return home and study under tutors appointed by him. Shelley's refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.

Marriage to Harriet Westbrook

In late December 1810, Shelley had met Harriet Westbrook, a pupil at the same boarding school as Shelley's sisters. They corresponded frequently that winter and also after Shelley had been expelled from Oxford. Shelley expounded his radical ideas on politics, religion and marriage to Harriet, and they gradually convinced each other that she was oppressed by her father and at school. Shelley's infatuation with Harriet developed in the months following his expulsion, when he was under severe emotional strain due to the conflict with his family, his bitterness over the breakdown of his romance with his cousin Harriet Grove, and his unfounded belief that he might have a fatal illness. At the same time, Harriet Westbrook's elder sister Eliza, to whom Harriet was very close, encouraged the young girl's romance with Shelley. Shelley's correspondence with Harriet intensified in July, while he was holidaying in Wales, and in response to her urgent pleas for his protection, he returned to London in early August.

Late in August 1811, Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the younger daughter of a London tavern owner; by marrying her. Putting aside his philosophical objections to matrimony, he left with the sixteen-year-old Harriet for Edinburgh on 25 August 1811, and they were married there on the 28th.He betrayed the acquisitive plans of his grandfather and father, who tried to starve him into submission but only drove the strong-willed youth to rebel against the established order. Early in 1812, Shelley, Harriet, and her older sister Eliza Westbrook went to Dublin, where Shelley circulated pamphlets advocating political rights for Roman Catholics, autonomy for Ireland, and freethinking ideals. The couple traveled to Lynmouth, Devon, where Shelley issued more political pamphlets, and then to North Wales, where they spent almost six months in 1812–13.

Hearing of the elopement, Harriet's father, John Westbrook, and Shelley's father, Timothy, cut off the allowances of the bride and groom. (Shelley's father believed his son had married beneath him, as Harriet's father had earned his fortune in trade and was the owner of a tavern and coffee house.)

Surviving on borrowed money, Shelley and Harriet stayed in Edinburgh for a month, with Hogg living under the same roof. The trio left for York in October, and Shelley went on to Sussex to settle matters with his father, leaving Harriet behind with Hogg. Shelley returned from his unsuccessful excursion to find that Eliza had moved in with Harriet and Hogg. Harriet confessed that Hogg had tried to seduce her while Shelley had been away. Shelley, Harriet and Eliza soon left for Keswick in the Lake District, leaving Hogg in York. In June 1813 Harriet Shelley gave birth to their daughter Ianthe, but a year later Shelley fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter of William Godwin and his first wife, née Mary Wollstonecraft. Against Godwin’s objections, Shelley and Mary Godwin eloped to France on July 27, 1814, taking with them Mary’s stepsister Jane (later “Claire”) Clairmont. Following travels through France, Switzerland, and Germany, they returned to London, where they were shunned by the Godwins and most other friends. Shelley dodged creditors until the birth of his son Charles (born to Harriet, November 30, 1814), his grandfather’s death (January 1815), and provisions of Sir Bysshe’s will forced Sir Timothy to pay Shelley’s debts and grant him an annual income.

At this time Shelley was also 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", became his confidante and intellectual companion as he developed his views on politics, religion, ethics and personal relationships.  Shelley proposed that she join him, Harriet and Eliza in a communal household where all property would be shared.

The Shelleys and Eliza spent December and January in Keswick where Shelley visited Robert Southey whose poetry he admired. Southey was taken with Shelley, even though there was a wide gulf between them politically, and predicted great things for him as a poet. Southey also informed Shelley that William Godwin, author of Political Justice, which had greatly influenced him in his youth, and which Shelley also admired, was still alive. Shelley wrote to Godwin, offering himself as his devoted disciple. Godwin, who had modified many of his earlier radical views, advised Shelley to reconcile with his father, become a scholar before he published anything else, and give up his avowed plans for political agitation in Ireland.

Meanwhile, Shelley had met his father's patron, Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk, who helped secure the reinstatement of Shelley's allowance. With Harriet's allowance also restored, Shelley now had the funds for his Irish venture. Their departure for Ireland was precipitated by increasing hostility towards the Shelley household from their landlord and neighbours who were alarmed by Shelley's scientific experiments, pistol shooting and radical political views. As tension mounted, Shelley claimed he had been attacked in his home by ruffians, an event which might have been real or a delusional episode triggered by stress. This was the first of a series of episodes in subsequent years where Shelley claimed to have been attacked by strangers during periods of personal crisis.

Early in 1812, Shelley wrote, published and personally distributed in Dublin three political tracts: An Address, to the Irish People; Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists; and Declaration of Rights. He also delivered a speech at a meeting of O'Connell's Catholic Committee in which he called for Catholic emancipation, repeal of the Acts of Union and an end to the oppression of the Irish poor. Reports of Shelley's subversive activities were sent to the Home Secretary.

Returning from Ireland, the Shelley household travelled to Wales, then Devon, where they again came under government surveillance for distributing subversive literature. Elizabeth Hitchener joined the household in Devon, but several months later had a falling out with the Shelleys and left.

The Shelley household had settled in Tremadog, Wales, in September 1812, where Shelley worked on Queen Mab, a utopian allegory with extensive notes preaching atheism, free love, republicanism and vegetarianism. The poem was published the following year in a private edition of 250 copies, although few were initially distributed because of the risk of prosecution for seditious and religious libel.

In February 1813, Shelley claimed he was attacked in his home at night. The incident might have been real, a hallucination brought on by stress, or a hoax staged by Shelley in order to escape government surveillance, creditors and his entanglements in local politics. The Shelleys and Eliza fled to Ireland, then London.

Back in England, Shelley's debts mounted as he tried unsuccessfully to reach a financial settlement with his father. On 23 June Harriet gave birth to a girl, Eliza Ianthe Shelley (known as Ianthe), and in the following months the relationship between Shelley and his wife deteriorated. Shelley resented the influence Harriet's sister had over her while Harriet was alienated from Shelley by his close friendship with an attractive widow, Mrs. Harriet de Boinville. Mrs. Boinville had married a French revolutionary émigré and hosted a salon where Shelley was able to discuss politics, philosophy and vegetarianism. Mrs. Boinville became a confidante of Shelley during his marital crisis. During a breakdown, Shelley moved into Mrs. Boinville’s home outside London. In February and March 1814, he became infatuated with her married daughter, Cornelia Turner, age eighteen, and wrote erotic poetry about her in his notebook.

Following Ianthe's birth, the Shelleys moved frequently across London, Wales, the Lake District, Scotland and Berkshire to escape creditors and search for a home. In March 1814, Shelley remarried Harriet in London to settle any doubts about the legality of their Edinburgh wedding and secure the rights of their child. Nevertheless, the Shelleys lived apart for most of the following months, and Shelley reflected bitterly on: "my rash & heartless union with Harriet".

Elopement with Mary Godwin

In May 1814, Shelley began visiting his mentor Godwin almost daily, and soon fell in love with Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Godwin and the late feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley and Mary declared their love for each other during a visit to her mother's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church on 26 June. When Shelley told Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Mary, his mentor banished him from the house and forbade Mary from seeing him. Shelley and Mary eloped to Europe on 28 July, taking Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Before leaving, Shelley had secured a loan of £3,000 but had left most of the funds at the disposal of Godwin and Harriet, who was again pregnant. The financial arrangement with Godwin led to rumours that he had sold his daughters to Shelley.

Shelley, Mary and Claire made their way across war-ravaged France where Shelley wrote to Harriet, asking her to meet them in Switzerland with the money he had left for her. Hearing nothing from Harriet in Switzerland, and unable to secure sufficient funds or suitable accommodation, the three travelled to Germany and Holland before returning to England on 13 September.

Shelley spent the next few months trying to raise loans and avoid bailiffs. Mary was pregnant, lonely, depressed and ill. Her mood was not improved when she heard that, on 30 November, Harriet had given birth to Charles Bysshe Shelley, heir to the Shelley fortune and baronetcy. This was followed, in early January 1815, by news that Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bysshe, had died leaving an estate worth £220,000. The settlement of the estate, and a financial settlement between Shelley and his father (now Sir Timothy), however, was not concluded until April the following year.

In February 1815, Mary gave premature birth to a baby girl who died ten days later, deepening her depression. In the following weeks, Mary became close to Hogg who temporarily moved into the household. Shelley was almost certainly having a sexual relationship with Claire at this time, and it is possible that Mary, with Shelley's encouragement, was also having a sexual relationship with Hogg. In May Claire left the household, at Mary's insistence, to reside in Lynmouth.

In August Shelley and Mary moved to Bishopsgate where Shelley worked on Alastor, a long poem in blank verse based on the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Alastor was published in an edition of 250 in early 1816 to poor sales and largely unfavourable reviews from the conservative press.

On 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to William Shelley. Shelley was delighted to have another son, but was suffering from the strain of prolonged financial negotiations with his father, Harriet and William Godwin. Shelley showed signs of delusional behaviour and was contemplating an escape to the continent.

Byron

Claire initiated a sexual relationship with Lord Byron in April 1816, just before his self-exile on the continent, and then arranged for Byron to meet Shelley, Mary, and her in Geneva. Shelley admired Byron's poetry and had sent him Queen Mab and other poems. Shelley's party arrived in Geneva in May and rented a house close to Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Byron was staying. There Shelley, Byron and the others engaged in discussions about literature, science and "various philosophical doctrines". One night, while Byron was reciting Coleridge's Christabel, Shelley suffered a severe panic attack with hallucinations. The previous night Mary had had a more productive vision or nightmare which inspired her novel Frankenstein.

Shelley and Byron then took a boating tour around Lake Geneva, which inspired Shelley to write his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", his first substantial poem since Alastor. A tour of Chamonix in the French Alps inspired "Mont Blanc", which has been described as an atheistic response to Coleridge's "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamoni". During this tour, Shelley often signed guest books with a declaration that he was an atheist. These declarations were seen by other British tourists, including Southey, which hardened attitudes against Shelley back home.

Relations between Byron and Shelley's party became strained when Byron was told that Claire was pregnant with his child. Shelley, Mary, and Claire left Switzerland in late August, with arrangements for the expected baby still unclear, although Shelley made provision for Claire and the baby in his will. In January 1817 Claire gave birth to a daughter by Byron who she named Alba, but later renamed Allegra in accordance with Byron's wishes.

Marriage to Mary Godwin

Shelley and Mary returned to England in September 1816, and in early October they heard that Mary's half-sister Fanny Imlay had killed herself. Godwin believed that Fanny had been in love with Shelley, and Shelley himself suffered depression and guilt over her death, writing: "Friend had I known thy secret grief / Should we have parted so." Further tragedy followed in December when Shelley's estranged wife Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine. Harriet, pregnant and living alone at the time, believed that she had been abandoned by her new lover. In her suicide letter she asked Shelley to take custody of their son Charles but to leave their daughter in her sister Eliza's care.

Shelley married Mary Godwin on 30 December, despite his philosophical objections to the institution. The marriage was intended to help secure Shelley's custody of his children by Harriet and to placate Godwin who had refused to see Shelley and Mary because of their previous adulterous relationship  . After a prolonged legal battle, the Court of Chancery eventually awarded custody of Shelley and Harriet's children to foster parents, on the grounds that Shelley had abandoned his first wife for Mary without cause and was an atheist.

In March 1817 the Shelleys moved to the village of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where Shelley's friend Thomas Love Peacock lived. The Shelley household included Claire and her baby Allegra, both of whose presence Mary resented. Shelley's generosity with money and increasing debts also led to financial and marital stress, as did Godwin's frequent requests for financial help.

On 2 September Mary gave birth to a daughter, Clara Everina Shelley. Soon after, Shelley left for London with Claire, which increased Mary's resentment towards her stepsister. Shelley was arrested for two days in London over money he owed, and attorneys visited Mary in Marlowe over Shelley's debts.

Shelley took part in the literary and political circle that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and during this period he met William Hazlitt and John Keats. Shelley's major work during this time was Laon and Cythna, a long narrative poem featuring incest and attacks on religion. It was hastily withdrawn after publication due to fears of prosecution for religious libel, and was re-edited and reissued as The Revolt of Islam in January 1818. Shelley also published two political tracts under a pseudonym: A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom (March 1817) and An Address to the People on the Death of Princess Charlotte (November 1817). In December he wrote "Ozymandias", which is considered to be one of his finest sonnets, as part of a competition with friend and fellow poet Horace Smith.

Italy

On 12 March 1818 the Shelleys and Claire left England to escape its "tyranny civil and religious". A doctor had also recommended that Shelley go to Italy for his chronic lung complaint, and Shelley had arranged to take Claire's daughter, Allegra, to her father Byron who was now in Venice.

After travelling some months through France and Italy, Shelley left Mary and baby Clara at Bagni di Lucca (in today's Tuscany) while he travelled with Claire to Venice to see Byron and make arrangements for visiting Allegra. Byron invited the Shelleys to stay at his summer residence at Este, and Shelley urged Mary to meet him there. Clara became seriously ill on the journey and died on 24 September in Venice. Following Clara's death, Mary fell into a long period of depression and emotional estrangement from Shelley.

The Shelleys moved to Naples on 1 December, where they stayed for three months. During this period Shelley was ill, depressed and almost suicidal: a state of mind reflected in his poem "Stanzas written in Dejection – December 1818, Near Naples".

While in Naples, Shelley registered the birth and baptism of a baby girl, Elena Adelaide Shelley (born 27 December), naming himself as the father and falsely naming Mary as the mother. The parentage of Elena has never been conclusively established. Biographers have variously speculated that she was adopted by Shelley to console Mary for the loss of Clara, that she was Shelley's child by Claire, that she was his child by his servant Elise Foggi, or that she was the child of a "mysterious lady" who had followed Shelley to the continent. Shelley registered the birth and baptism on 27 February 1819, and the household left Naples for Rome the following day, leaving Elena with carers. Elena was to die in a poor suburb of Naples on 9 June 1820.

In Rome, Shelley was in poor health, probably having developed nephritis and tuberculosis which later was in remission. Nevertheless, he made significant progress on three major works: Julian and Maddalo, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci. Julian and Maddalo is an autobiographical poem which explores the relationship between Shelley and Byron and analyses Shelley's personal crises of 1818 and 1819. The poem was completed in the summer of 1819, but was not published in Shelley's lifetime. Prometheus Unbound is a long dramatic poem inspired by Aeschylus's retelling of the Prometheus myth. It was completed in late 1819 and published in 1820. The Cenci is a verse drama of rape, murder and incest based on the story of the Renaissance Count Cenci of Rome and his daughter Beatrice. Shelley completed the play in September and the first edition was published that year. It was to become one of his most popular works and the only one to have two authorised editions in his lifetime.

Shelley's three-year-old son William died in June, probably of malaria. The new tragedy caused a further decline in Shelley's health and deepened Mary's depression. On 4 August she wrote: "We have now lived five years together; and if all the events of the five years were blotted out, I might be happy".

The Shelleys were now living in Livorno where, in September, Shelley heard of the Peterloo Massacre of peaceful protesters in Manchester. Within two weeks he had completed one of his most famous political poems, The Mask of Anarchy, and despatched it to Leigh Hunt for publication. Hunt, however, decided not to publish it for fear of prosecution for seditious libel. The poem was only officially published in 1832.

The Shelleys moved to Florence in October, where Shelley read a scathing review of the Revolt of Islam (and its earlier version Laon and Cythna) in the conservative Quarterly Review. Shelley was angered by the personal attack on him in the article which he erroneously believed had been written by Southey. His bitterness over the review lasted for the rest of his life.

On 12 November, Mary gave birth to a boy, Percy Florence Shelley.[108][109] Around the time of Percy's birth, the Shelleys met Sophia Stacey, who was a ward of one of Shelley's uncles and was staying at the same pension as the Shelleys. Sophia, a talented harpist and singer, formed a friendship with Shelley while Mary was preoccupied with her newborn son. Shelley wrote at least five love poems and fragments for Sophia including "Song written for an Indian Air".

The Shelleys moved to Pisa in January 1820, ostensibly to consult a doctor who had been recommended to them. There they became friends with the Irish republican Margaret Mason (Lady Margaret Mountcashell) and her common-law husband George William Tighe. Mrs Mason became the inspiration for Shelley's poem "The Sensitive Plant", and Shelley's discussions with Mason and Tighe influenced his political thought and his critical interest in the population theories of Thomas Malthus.

In March, Shelley wrote to friends that Mary was depressed, suicidal and hostile towards him. Shelley was also beset by financial worries, as creditors from England pressed him for payment and he was obliged to make secret payments in connection with his "Neapolitan charge" Elena.

Meanwhile, Shelley was writing A Philosophical View of Reform, a political essay which he had begun in Rome. The unfinished essay, which remained unpublished in Shelley's lifetime, has been called "one of the most advanced and sophisticated documents of political philosophy in the nineteenth century".

Another crisis erupted in June when Shelley claimed that he had been assaulted in the Pisan post office by a man accusing him of foul crimes. Shelley's biographer James Bieri suggests that this incident was possibly a delusional episode brought on by extreme stress, as Shelley was being blackmailed by a former servant, Paolo Foggi, over baby Elena. It is likely that the blackmail was connected with a story spread by another former servant, Elise Foggi, that Shelley had fathered a child to Claire in Naples and had sent it to a foundling home. Shelley, Claire and Mary denied this story, and Elise later recanted.

In July, hearing that John Keats was seriously ill in England, Shelley wrote to the poet inviting him to stay with him at Pisa. Keats replied with hopes of seeing him, but instead, arrangements were made for Keats to travel to Rome. Following the death of Keats in 1821, Shelley wrote Adonais, which Harold Bloom considers one of the major pastoral elegies. The poem was published in Pisa in July 1821, but sold few copies.

In early July 1820, Shelley heard that baby Elena had died on 9 June. In the months following the post office incident and Elena's death, relations between Mary and Claire deteriorated and Claire spent most of the next two years living separately from the Shelleys, mainly in Florence.

That December Shelley met Teresa (Emilia) Viviani, who was the 19-year-old daughter of the Governor of Pisa and was living in a convent awaiting a suitable marriage. Shelley visited her several times over the next few months and they started a passionate correspondence which dwindled after her marriage the following September. Emilia was the inspiration for Shelley's major poem Epipsychidion.

In March 1821 Shelley completed "A Defence of Poetry", a response to Peacock's article "The Four Ages of Poetry". Shelley's essay, with its famous conclusion "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", remained unpublished in his lifetime.

Shelley went alone to Ravenna in early August to see Byron, making a detour to Livorno for a rendezvous with Claire. Shelley stayed with Byron for two weeks and invited the older poet to spend the winter in Pisa. After Shelley had heard Byron recite his newly completed fifth canto of Don Juan he wrote to Mary: "I despair of rivalling Byron."

In November Byron moved into Villa Lanfranchi in Pisa, just across the river from the Shelleys. Byron became the centre of the "Pisan circle" which was to include Shelley, Thomas Medwin, Edward Williams and Edward Trelawny.

In the early months of 1822 Shelley became increasingly close to Jane Williams, who was living with her partner Edward Williams in the same building as the Shelleys. Shelley wrote a number of love poems for Jane, including "The Serpent is shut out of Paradise" and "With a Guitar, to Jane". Shelley's obvious affection for Jane was to cause increasing tension among Shelley, Edward Williams and Mary.

Claire arrived in Pisa in April at Shelley's invitation, and soon after they heard that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in Ravenna. The Shelleys and Claire then moved to Villa Magni, near Lerici on the shores of the Gulf of La Spezia . Shelley acted as mediator between Claire and Byron over arrangements for the burial of their daughter, and the added strain led to Shelley having a series of hallucinations.

Mary almost died from a miscarriage on 16 June, her life only being saved by Shelley's effective first aid. Two days later Shelley wrote to a friend that there was no sympathy between Mary and him and if the past and future could be obliterated he would be content in his boat with Jane and her guitar. That same day he also wrote to Trelawny asking for prussic acid. The following week, Shelley woke the household with his screaming over a nightmare or hallucination in which he saw Edward and Jane Williams as walking corpses and himself strangling Mary.

During this time, Shelley was writing his final major poem, the unfinished The Triumph of Life, which Harold Bloom has called "the most despairing poem he wrote".

English poet

Settling near Windsor Great Park in 1815, Shelley read the classics with Hogg and another friend, Thomas Love Peacock. He also wrote Alastor; or The Spirit of Solitude, a blank-verse poem, published with shorter poems in 1816, that warns idealists (like Shelley himself) not to abandon “sweet human love” and social improvement for the vain pursuit of evanescent dreams. By mid-May 1816, Shelley, Mary, and Claire Clairmont hurried to Geneva to intercept Lord Byron, with whom Claire had begun an affair. During this memorable summer, Shelley composed the poems “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and “Mont Blanc,” and Mary began her novel Frankenstein. Shelley’s party returned to England in September, settling in Bath. Late in the year, Harriet Shelley drowned herself in London, and on December 30, 1816, Shelley and Mary were married with the Godwins’ blessing. But a Chancery Court decision declared Shelley unfit to raise Ianthe and Charles (his children by Harriet), who were placed in foster care at his expense.

In March 1817 the Shelleys settled near Peacock at Marlow, where Shelley wrote his twelve-canto romance-epic Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City and Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein. They compiled History of a Six Weeks’ Tour jointly from the letters and journals of their trips to Switzerland, concluding with “Mont Blanc.” In November, Laon and Cythna was suppressed by its printer and publisher, who feared that Shelley’s idealized tale of a peaceful national revolution, bloodily suppressed by a league of king and priests, violated the laws against blasphemous libel. After revisions, it was reissued in 1818 as The Revolt of Islam.

Because Shelley’s health suffered from the climate and his financial obligations outran his resources, the Shelleys and Claire Clairmont went to Italy, where Byron was residing. They reached Milan in April 1818 and proceeded to Pisa and Leghorn (Livorno). That summer, at Bagni di Lucca, Shelley translated Plato’s Symposium and wrote his own essay “On Love.” He also completed a modest poem entitled Rosalind and Helen, in which he imagines his destiny in the poet-reformer “Lionel,” who—imprisoned for radical activity—dies young after his release.

Thus far, Shelley’s literary career had been politically oriented. Queen Mab, the early poems first published in 1964 as The Esdaile Notebook, Laon and Cythna, and most of his prose works were devoted to reforming society; and even Alastor, Rosalind and Helen, and the personal lyrics voiced the concerns of an idealistic reformer who is disappointed or persecuted by an unreceptive society. But in Italy, far from the daily irritations of British politics, Shelley deepened his understanding of art and literature and, unable to reshape the world to conform to his vision, he concentrated on embodying his ideals within his poems. His aim became, as he wrote in “Ode to the West Wind,” to make his words “Ashes and sparks” as from “an unextinguished hearth,” thereby transforming subsequent generations and, through them, the world. Later, as he became estranged from Mary Shelley, he portrayed even love in terms of aspiration, rather than fulfillment: “The desire of the moth for the star,/ Of the night for the morrow,/ The devotion to something afar/ From the sphere of our sorrow.”

In August 1818, Shelley and Byron again met in Venice; the Shelleys remained there or at Este through October 1818. During their stay, little Clara Shelley (b. 1817) became ill and died. In “Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills” (published with Rosalind and Helen), Shelley writes how visions arising from the beautiful landscape seen from a hill near Este had revived him from despair to hopes for the political regeneration of Italy, thus transforming the scene into “a green isle. . . / In the deep wide sea of Misery.” He also began Julian and Maddalo—in which Byron (“Maddalo”) and Shelley debate human nature and destiny—and drafted Act I of Prometheus Unbound. In November 1818 the Shelleys traveled through Rome to Naples, where they remained until the end of February 1819.

 Settling next at Rome, Shelley continued Prometheus Unbound and outlined The Cenci, a tragedy on the Elizabethan model based on a case of incestuous rape and patricide in sixteenth-century Rome. He completed this drama during the summer of 1819 near Leghorn, where the Shelleys fled in June after their other child, William Shelley (b. 1816), died from malaria. Shelley himself terms The Cenci “a sad reality,” contrasting it with earlier “visions . . . of the beautiful and just.” Memorable characters, classic five-act structure, powerful and evocative language, and moral ambiguities still make The Cenci theatrically effective. Even so, it is a less notable achievement than Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama, which Shelley completed at Florence in the autumn of 1819, near the birth of Percy Florence Shelley, Mary Shelley’s only surviving child. Both plays appeared about 1820.

In Prometheus Shelley inverts the plot of a lost play by Aeschylus in a poetic masterpiece that combines supple blank verse with a variety of complex lyric measures. In Act I, Prometheus, tortured on Jupiter’s orders for having given mankind the gift of moral freedom, recalls his earlier curse of Jupiter and forgives him (“I wish no living thing to suffer pain”). By eschewing revenge, Prometheus, who embodies the moral will, can be reunited with his beloved Asia, a spiritual ideal transcending humanity; her love prevents him from becoming another tyrant when Jupiter is overthrown by the mysterious power known as Demogorgon. Act II traces Asia’s awakening and journey toward Prometheus, beginning with her descent into the depths of nature to confront and question Demogorgon. Act III depicts the overthrow of Jupiter and the union of Asia and Prometheus, who—leaving Jupiter’s throne vacant—retreat to a cave from which they influence the world through ideals embodied in the creative arts. The end of the act describes the renovation of both human society and the natural world. Act IV opens with joyful lyrics by spirits who describe the benevolent transformation of the human consciousness that has occurred. Next, other spirits hymn the beatitude of humanity and nature in this new millennial age; and finally, Demogorgon returns to tell all creatures that, should the fragile state of grace be lost, they can restore their moral freedom through these “spells”:

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite ;

To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;

To defy Power which seems Omnipotent ;

To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. . .

Prometheus Unbound, which was the keystone of Shelley’s poetic achievement, was written after he had been chastened by “sad reality” but before he began to fear that he had failed to reach an audience. Published with it were some of the poet’s finest and most hopeful shorter poems, including “Ode to Liberty,” “Ode to the West Wind,” “The Cloud,” and “To a Sky-Lark.”

While completing Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, Shelley reacted to news of the Peterloo Massacre (August 1819) in England by writing The Masque of Anarchy and several radical songs that he hoped would rouse the British people to active but nonviolent political protest. Later in 1819 he sent to England Peter Bell the Third, which joins literary satire of William Wordsworth’s Peter Bell to attacks on corruptions in British society, and he drafted A Philosophical View of Reform, his longest (though incomplete) prose work, urging moderate reform to prevent a bloody revolution that might lead to new tyranny. Too radical to be published during Shelley’s lifetime, The Masque of Anarchy appeared after the reformist elections of 1832, Peter Bell the Third and the political ballads in 1839–40, and A Philosophical View of Reform not until 1920.

After moving to Pisa in 1820, Shelley was stung by hostile reviews into expressing his hopes more guardedly. His “Letter to Maria Gisborne” in heroic couplets and “The Witch of Atlas” in ottava rima (both 1820; published 1824) combine the mythopoeic mode of Prometheus Unbound with the urbane self-irony that had emerged in Peter Bell the Third, showing Shelley’s awareness that his ideals might seem naive to others. Late that year, Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant, his satirical drama on the trial for adultery of Caroline (estranged wife of King George IV), appeared anonymously but was quickly suppressed. In 1821, however, Shelley reasserted his uncompromising idealism. Epipsychidion (in couplets) mythologizes his infatuation with Teresa (“Emilia”) Viviani, a convent-bound young admirer, into a Dantesque fable of how human desire can be fulfilled through art. His essay A Defence of Poetry (published 1840) eloquently declares that the poet creates humane values and imagines the forms that shape the social order: thus each mind recreates its own private universe, and “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” Adonais, a pastoral elegy in Spenserian stanzas, commemorates the death of John Keats by declaring that, while we “decay/ Like corpses in a charnel,” the creative spirit of Adonais, despite his physical death, “has outsoared the shadow of our night.”

The One remains, the many change

And pass;

Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s

Shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments .

The verse drama Hellas (published 1822) celebrates the Greek revolution against Turkish rule and reiterates the political message of Laon and Cythna— that the struggle for human liberty can be neither totally defeated nor fully realized, since the ideal is greater than its earthly embodiments.

After Byron’s arrival in Pisa late in 1821, Shelley, inhibited by his presence, completed only a series of urbane, yet longing lyrics—most addressed to Jane Williams—during the early months of 1822. He began the drama “Charles the First,” but soon abandoned it. After the Shelleys and Edward and Jane Williams moved to Lerici, Shelley began “The Triumph of Life,” a dark fragment on which he was at work until he sailed to Leghorn to welcome his friend Leigh Hunt, who had arrived to edit a periodical called The Liberal. Shelley and Edward Williams drowned on July 8, 1822, when their boat sank during the stormy return voyage to Lerici.

Mary Shelley faithfully collected her late husband’s unpublished writings, and by 1840, aided by Hunt and others, she had disseminated his fame and most of his writings. The careful study of Shelley’s publications and manuscripts has since elucidated his deep learning, clear thought, and subtle artistry. Shelley was a passionate idealist and consummate artist who, while developing rational themes within traditional poetic forms, stretched language to its limits in articulating both personal desire and social altruism.

Death

On 1 July 1822, Shelley and Edward Williams sailed in Shelley's new boat the Don Juan to Livorno where Shelley met Leigh Hunt and Byron in order to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal. After the meeting, on 8 July, Shelley, Williams, and their boat boy sailed out of Livorno for Lerici. A few hours later, the Don Juan and its inexperienced crew were lost in a storm. The vessel, an open boat, had been custom-built in Genoa for Shelley. Mary Shelley declared in her "Note on Poems of 1822" (1839) that the design had a defect and that the boat was never seaworthy. The sinking, however, was probably due to the severe storm and poor seamanship of the three men on board.

Shelley's badly decomposed body washed ashore at Viareggio ten days later and was identified by Trelawny from the clothing and a copy of Keats's Lamia in a jacket pocket. On 16 August, his body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio and the ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome.

The day after the news of his death reached England, the Tory London newspaper The Courier printed: "Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned; now he knows whether there is God or no."

Shelley's ashes were reburied in a different plot at the cemetery in 1823. His grave bears the Latin inscription Cor Cordium (Heart of Hearts), and a few lines of "Ariel's Song" from Shakespeare's The Tempest:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea change

Into something rich and strange.