Edward John Trelawny – författare

In February 1822 the writer and adventurer Edward John Trelawny arrived in Pisa to make the acquaintance of his heroes Shelley and Byron, leaving a broken marriage and an exotic seafaring career behind him. He became a close companion to them and their circle, and this collection of his reminiscences is one of the most fresh and intriguing documents of the Romantic age. It records his initial meeting with a cynical and flippant Byron, his impressions of a youthful, otherworldly Shelley and, most memorably, the poet's death at sea and the subsequent burning of his body on the sand. Trelawny's Records combine vigorous prose, vivid description and mythmaking to create one of the most memorable portraits of an age.Rosemary Ashton's new introduction explores the mysterious life and quixotic character of Trelawny, and this edition includes all the author's later revisions.Edward John Trelawny (1792-1881) was one of the most curious figures of the English Romantic Movement, and spent his long life travelling extensively as a naval officer, biographer and adventurer. After a brief education, Trelawny was assigned as a volunteer in the Royal Navy by the age of thirteen, and led an unaccomplished naval career until his resignation at nineteen. He met Shelley and Byron in Italy in 1822, where he became fascinated, almost hypnotized, by the two poets. His Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, written after both their deaths, is the end-product of this strange obsession. An incorrigible romancer, Trelawny had three marriages - the second of which was to Tersitza, sister of the Greek warlord Odysseus Androutsos, whose cause he had joined and whose mountain fortress he looked after when Odysseus was arrested. He died after a fall at the age of eighty-eight, in England, and his ashes were buried in Rome in a plot adjacent to Shelley's grave.Rosemary Ashton was educated at the universities of Aberdeen, Heidelberg and Cambridge. She taught English literature at University College London from 1974 to 2012, and is Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature and an Honorary Fellow of UCL. She has published critical biographies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas and Jane Carlyle, George Eliot, and George Henry Lewes, two books on Anglo-German literary and cultural relations in the nineteenth century, The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800-1860 (1980) and Little Germany: Exile and Asylum in Victorian England (1986), and two books about Victorian radicalism, 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London (2006) and Victorian Bloomsbury (2012).

In February 1822 the writer and adventurer Edward John Trelawny arrived in Pisa to make the acquaintance of his heroes Shelley and Byron, leaving a broken marriage and an exotic seafaring career behind him. He became a close companion to them and their circle, and this collection of his reminiscences is one of the most fresh and intriguing documents of the Romantic age. It records his initial meeting with a cynical and flippant Byron, his impressions of a youthful, otherworldly Shelley and, most memorably, the poet's death at sea and the subsequent burning of his body on the sand. Trelawny's Records combine vigorous prose, vivid description and mythmaking to create one of the most memorable portraits of an age.Rosemary Ashton's new introduction explores the mysterious life and quixotic character of Trelawny, and this edition includes all the author's later revisions.Edward John Trelawny (1792-1881) was one of the most curious figures of the English Romantic Movement, and spent his long life travelling extensively as a naval officer, biographer and adventurer. After a brief education, Trelawny was assigned as a volunteer in the Royal Navy by the age of thirteen, and led an unaccomplished naval career until his resignation at nineteen. He met Shelley and Byron in Italy in 1822, where he became fascinated, almost hypnotized, by the two poets. His Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, written after both their deaths, is the end-product of this strange obsession. An incorrigible romancer, Trelawny had three marriages - the second of which was to Tersitza, sister of the Greek warlord Odysseus Androutsos, whose cause he had joined and whose mountain fortress he looked after when Odysseus was arrested. He died after a fall at the age of eighty-eight, in England, and his ashes were buried in Rome in a plot adjacent to Shelley's grave.Rosemary Ashton was educated at the universities of Aberdeen, Heidelberg and Cambridge. She taught English literature at University College London from 1974 to 2012, and is Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature and an Honorary Fellow of UCL. She has published critical biographies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas and Jane Carlyle, George Eliot, and George Henry Lewes, two books on Anglo-German literary and cultural relations in the nineteenth century, The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800-1860 (1980) and Little Germany: Exile and Asylum in Victorian England (1986), and two books about Victorian radicalism, 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London (2006) and Victorian Bloomsbury (2012).David Wright (1920-1994) was born in Johannesburg and came to England aged fourteen to attend the Northampton School for the Deaf. His first poem was published shortly after graduating from Oriel College, Oxford, and he published poetry throughout his life, including Moral Stories (1954), Monologue of a Deaf Man (1958), Metrical Observations (1980) and Elegies (1990). He was both a remarkable poet and a remarkable editor, responsible for, among others, the Penguin Classics edition of Edward Thomas's Selected Poems and Prose, The Penguin Book of English Romantic Verse and, with John Heath-Stubbs, The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Verse. He was also the author of a number of books on Portugal, a biography of Roy Campbell and a memoir, Deafness: A Personal Account.

The biographer and novelist E. J. Trelawny (1792-1881) published Recollections in 1858. It is a memoir of the time Trelawny spent in the Mediterranean with the Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and Lord Byron (1788-1824) from 1822 until the early deaths of both poets. Trelawny's vivid and personal account quickly became popular, comfortably out-selling other biographies, and was republished in 1878 under the title Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author. The work, based on Trelawny's notes and correspondence, describes their expatriate lifestyle in Italy, Shelley's sudden tragic death at sea, Byron's support for the Greek War of Independence, and his death. It is an indispensable source about the final months of Shelley and Byron's intense and unconventional lives, providing eye-witness details and intimate knowledge of two of England's greatest Romantic poets.

Auszug: "Edward John Trelawny kam ungefähr drei Monate nach Shelley, am 13. November 1792, in London zur Welt. Seine Mutter, Maria Hawkins, war spanischen Blutes. Das erhellt nicht nur manches in der leidenschaftlichen Wesensart des Sohnes: seine Neigung, von einem Gegensatz in den andern zu fallen, seinen Hang zur Schauspielerei, seine Beweglichkeit, sondern auch seine »Lust zu fabulieren«. Sicher war er ein entfernter Vetter jenes Ritters, der auf seiner Rosinante immer nach neuen Gefahren pirschte, wunderlich geschunden und geschoren, und doch glücklich, unbeschwert die Welt durchabenteuern zu dürfen. Nicht minder aber auch ein Vetter jenes Marquis Posa, der von einem Philipp II. »Gedankenfreiheit« forderte. Der Vater, Charles Brereton, war Oberstleutnant und zweimal Mitglied des Unterhauses. Er entstammte einer vornehmen altcornwallischen Familie, die Heer, Flotte, Kammer vollwichtige Vertreter gestellt hat. Von dessen Seite erbte Edward John Trelawny die »Statur«: die Starrköpfigkeit wie die Rücksichtslosigkeit, gelegentlich sogar Klobigkeit des Auftretens. Die Entschlossenheit, »zu erlangen, was er wünschte, und wenn er durch Himmel und Hölle gehen müßte«, war nach eigenem Geständnis sein schlimmster Feind. Er war wie sein Vater der zweite, d. h. ein »jüngerer Sohn«, dessen Sonderstellung in den hochbürtigen Familien er in seinem Roman dick unterstrichen hat."