The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (eBook)

JOHN WORTHEN is Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham, UK. His books include The Life of William Wordsworth: A Critical Biography (2014); The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2010); T. S. Eliot: A Short Biography (2009); Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (2007); and D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005).

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgements xi

Abbreviations and Texts xiii

Foreword xvii

Part I Background, Foreground 1792-1811 1

1 A Scholar, a Gentleman, and a Poet 1792 -1810 3

2 'Bit' 1796 -1811 12

3 Panting to Seize the Wings of Morn 1810 -1811 21

4 Printing Freaks 1810 -1811 32

5 The Necessity of Atheism, Expulsion & Debt 1811 43

Part II Lover of Mankind, Democrat & Atheist 1811-1818 55

6 A Shelley Business! 1811 57

7 My New Sister 1811 -1813 67

8 Tan-yr-allt 1813 78

9 Queen Mab: Shadows of the Dream 1812 -1813 83

10 A Rash & Heartless Union 1813 -1814 96

11 Mary Godwin 1814 103

12 This is a Vampire 1814 -1815 113

13 Alastor 1815 -1816 124

14 Geneva and Byron 1816 135

15 A Series of Pain 1816 149

16 Drowned, Frozen, Dead 1816 158

17 Laon and Cythna: Writing against Death 1817 167

18 My Country Dear to Me Forever 1817 -1818 180

Part III Expatriation 1818-1821 191

19 Italy: As Light in the Sun, Throned 1818 193

20 Flowering Islands 1818 207

21 A Birth in Naples 1818 -1819 222

22 Exceeding Grief: The Cenci 1819 230

23 Prometheus Unbound 1819 240

24 Satiric Reality 1819 248

25 Beam-Anatomising Prism 1819 -1820 258

26 Harmonious Madness 1820 268

27 Swellfoot the Tyrant 1820 280

28 Epipsychidion v. Flesh & Blood 1820-1821 291

29 Defending Poetry 1821 302

30 This Latest of my Orphans 1821 313

Part IV No Rest or Respite 1821-1822 321

31 Ariel to Miranda 1821 -1822 323

32 To the Villa Magni 1822 335

33 'The Triumph of Life' 1822 342

34 Enchanted Heart 1822 349

35 Upon a Precipice 1822 362

36 Going to Join Friend Plato 1822 370

37 Beyond this Life 379

Notes 393

Bibliography 448

Index 457