Percy B. Shelley – författare

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.Volumes XI and XII complete the Shelley and His Circle collection, shedding light on Shelley’s unfulfilled literary and personal aspirations in the months prior to his drowning. Comprising nearly 200 manuscripts from 1821 to 1822, the set includes new translations of Italian correspondence and fresh transcriptions of published material, including Shelley’s “Triumph of Life,” a series of short poems in Italian by Lord Byron, and a fragment of Byron’s drama Heaven and Earth.The manuscripts, essays, and letters in these volumes chronicle how Byron’s connection to Countess Teresa Guiccioli’s politically imperiled family dictated his movements in Italy—ultimately leading to his reunion with Shelley and the formation of the short-lived Pisan Circle. Selections of Leigh Hunt’s correspondence are presented in full for the first time, as are previously unpublished letters of Edward John Trelawny, along with his eyewitness account of the cremation of Shelley’s remains. The reproduction of a proof copy of the Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, complete with Mary Shelley’s handwritten corrections, further enriches these closing volumes.Annotated manuscripts from the period immediately after Shelley’s death offer a record of the anxieties and dashed hopes of his survivors amid the search for the lost poet and his close friend Edward E. Williams, who drowned alongside him. The collection closes with an unpublished letter by the widowed Mary Shelley, as she prepared for her reluctant return to England.

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.Volumes I and II of Shelley and His Circle introduce readers to the young Shelley and his most important relationships. Drawing together biographies, manuscripts, and letters, these volumes immerse readers in the connected worlds of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Love Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and more.The first volume opens at the turn of the nineteenth century with writings by elder members of Shelley’s circle, including Godwin and Wollstonecraft—the poet's future in-laws. Among the featured materials are numerous previously unpublished writings, including over sixty works by Godwin and a selection of Wollstonecraft’s letters that engage with such radical ideas as anarchism and feminism.Also covered are Shelley’s own school days at Eton and Oxford, as well as his elopement with Harriet Westbrook in 1811. Shelley’s many letters to his friend and confidant, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, capture his emotional and intellectual coming of age. They are complimented by select early poetic compositions and a full transcription of The Diary of Harriet Grove, written by Shelley’s boyhood sweetheart. Setting the stage for the entire Shelley and His Circle collection, the materials gathered here offer a striking portrait of the teenage poet and an intimate glimpse into his formative relationships.

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.Volumes III and IV of Shelley and His Circle bring together over 100 manuscripts and essays penned between 1811 and 1816, a formative period for the defining relationships of Shelley’s life. As the poet’s first marriage to Harriet Westbrook grew strained amid his burgeoning romance with Mary Godwin, so too did his long-standing association with Thomas Jefferson Hogg. In the spring of 1816, Shelley and Godwin struck up a new friendship with Lord Byron while visiting Geneva—where Godwin also famously began to draft her iconic novel Frankenstein.Among the manuscripts are twelve letters and literary pieces by Byron, including the first draft of his parting poem to Lady Byron, “Fare Thee Well.” These volumes also showcase the expanded journal of Claire Clairemont, Shelley’s revealing correspondence with both Godwin and Hogg, Shelley’s annotated copy of Queen Mab, and the letter composed by Harriet a few hours before she drowned herself in the Serpentine.Faithfully reproduced and featuring the original annotations of their authors, these manuscripts appear as they were composed over 200 years ago. They are complimented by fascinating miscellany, including previously unpublished letters by Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley’s earliest known childhood poem, “A Cat in Distress,” and his Esdaile Notebook, a collection of verse written during his school days at Eton.

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.Volumes V and VI of Shelley and His Circle illuminate a pivotal phase of Shelley’s personal and artistic evolution. Spanning late 1816 through 1819, the manuscripts, letters, and journals included here illustrate Shelley’s emerging poetic maturity, as well as his developing friendships with Leigh Hunt and John Keats.These volumes chronicle the writing of The Revolt of Islam, Shelley’s epic on the lessons of the French Revolution; the poet’s journey to Italy; the deaths of his and Mary’s two children; and his literary annus mirabilis in 1819. During this year, he wrote Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, and A Philosophical View of Reform, which is here presented in a corrected text. The sequence closes in late December 1819 with a series of letters that signal Shelley’s growing isolation from his English cadre.Among the 175 fully transcribed manuscripts in this set are eighty-two penned by Shelley, and many others by William Godwin, Hunt, and Lord Byron. Also included are significant early letters by Edward John Trelawny, in addition to letters and journals of Keats, Thomas Love Peacock, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and Edward E. Williams. An appendix featuring eleven early letters and poems by Byron completes this revelatory set.

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.Volumes VII and VIII of Shelley and His Circle present a wide-ranging collection of Shelley and Lord Byron’s letters, notes, and manuscripts composed during their summer in Switzerland and their Italian periods—with a spotlight on their correspondence between 1816 and 1819. While Italy proved fertile ground for Byron’s literary output, the isolated Shelley found himself far from peers who had nurtured his talents in England.Included are Shelley’s long letter to Thomas Love Peacock, describing his first acquaintance with Byron and their trip together around Lake Geneva, the press-copy manuscripts of Byron’s Beppo and Shelley’s “Athanase: A Fragment,” Shelley’s annotations in copies of William Godwin’s Political Justice and Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and significant correspondence between Shelley, Godwin, and Leigh Hunt. Also included are dozens of letters chronicling Byron’s romance with the Italian countess Teresa Guiccioli, as they carried on an affair from different apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli.Through meticulously transcribed primary sources (including full translations of those in Italian and Latin) and fascinating reproductions of authentic letters, these volumes shed light on the highs and lows of Shelley and Byron’s sojourn across the Continent.

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.Volumes IX and X of Shelley and His Circle offer insights into both Shelley’s youth and his later Italian exile, painting an especially vivid picture of the political and personal crises that dominated his life in the critical year of 1820.Volume IX features a retrospective on the young Shelley, bringing together his unpublished early letters from 1809–1810, a memorandum book that he kept at Eton, a libelous verse-letter about his parents, and other works predating his Italian exile. This backward glance also includes the only known exchange between Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay, William Godwin’s first letter to Malthus, and a partial draft of Mary Shelley’s Proserpine, complete with edits made by her husband.Volume X chronicles Shelley’s Italian residence from July through December 1820. In this period of political unrest, the letters of Leigh Hunt, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and Countess Teresa Guiccioli reflect preoccupation with Queen Caroline’s “trial” for adultery in Britain and with brewing revolutions in Italy. Other highlights include the press copy of Byron’s verse drama Marino Faliero, a young British officer’s reminiscences of Shelley in 1814, and the young architect Henry Reveley’s testimony about the Circle. Together, the materials illuminate the Circle’s impassioned engagement with the political discourse of the times.