Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Literary Life PDF
Preview Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Literary Life
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Macmillan Literary Lives General Editor: Richard Dutton, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Lancaster This series offers stimulating accounts of the literary careers of the most widely read British and Irish authors. Volumes follow the outline of writers' working lives, not in the spirit of traditional biography, but aiming to trace the professional, publishing and social contexts which shaped their writing. The role and status of 'the author' as the creator of literary texts is a vexed issue in current critical theory, where a variety of social, linguistic and psychologic al approaches have challenged the old concentration on writers as specially-gifted individuals. Yet reports of 'the death of the author' in literary studies are (as Mark Twain said of a premature obituary) an exaggeration. This series aims to demonstrate how an under standing of writers' careers can promote, for students and general readers alike, a more informed historical reading of their works Published titles WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Richard Dutton PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Michael O'Neill JOHN DONNE George Parfitt JOSEPH CONRAD Cedric Watts EMILY AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE Tom Winnifrith and Edward Chitham D. H. LAWRENCE John Worthen Further titles in preparation Series Standing Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the UK we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG 21 2XS, England. Percy Bysshe Shelley A Literary Life Michael O'Neill Lecturer in English University of Durham M MACMILLAN ©Michael O'Neill1989 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WCIE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1989 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data O'Neill, Michael Percy Bysshe Shelley: a literary life. (Macmillan literary lives). 1. Poetry in English. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822. Critical studies I. Title 821'.7 ISBN 978-0-333-44705-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20294-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20294-2 To Jamie McKendrick Contents Acknowledgements viii Note on Texts and Abbreviations ix 1 Introduction: 'Internal Powers' and 'External Influences' 1 2 1810-1816: 'Breathing Hatred to Government & Religion' 10 3 1816-1818: 'Truth's Deathless Voice' 36 4 1818-1819: 'Beyond the Present & Tangible Object' 62 5 1819-1820: 'The Torrent of My Indignation' 93 6 1820-1822: 'Where the Eternal are' 125 ~~ 1~ Further Reading 165 Index 168 vii Acknowledgements As will be apparent, my view of Shelley's literary career has been shaped by the work of many critics and scholars. Where appropri ate, acknowledgement is made in the text, notes and further reading section, but I should like to say at the outset how indebted I am to the volumes in the Shelley and his Circle series, to Newman Ivey White's biography of the poet, and to Kenneth Neill Camer on's magisterial Shelley: The Golden Years. For information about and analysis of Shelley's political thinking, I have found P.M. S. Dawson's study, The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics, indispensable. Quotations from Shelley's letters are from The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Frederick L. Jones (1964), by kind permission of Oxford University Press. viii Note on Texts and Abbreviations Except where indicated otherwise, Shelley's poetry is quoted from Shelley: Poetical Works, edited by Thomas Hutchinson, new edn, corr. by G. M. Matthews (London, 1970). This work is here referred toasPW. Except where indicated otherwise, Shelley's prose is quoted from Shelley's Prose; Or, The Trumpet of a Prophecy, edited by David Lee Clark, corr. edn (Albuquerque, 1966). This work is here referred to as Prose. Other Abbreviations Used in the Book Dawson P. M. S. Dawson, The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics (Oxford, 1980). EN The Esdaile Notebook, edited by Kenneth Neill Cameron (London, 1964). GY Kenneth Neill Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years (Cam bridge, Massachusetts, 1974). HalE~vy Elie Halevy, The Liberal Awakening (1815-1830), trans lated by E. I. Watkin (1926; London and New York, 1987) Vol. II of A History of the English People. Journals The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844, edited by Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, 2 vols (Oxford, 1987). Letters The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Frederick L. Jones, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964). PP Shelley's Poetry and Prose, edited by Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (New York and London, 1977). RR The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers, edited by Donald H. Reiman, 3 parts, 9 vols (New York and London, 1972). SC Shelley and his Circle 1773-1822, Vols I-IV, edited by Kenneth Neill Cameron (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1961-70); Vols V-VIII, edited by Donald H. Reiman (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1973-86). ix Note on Texts and Abbreviations WTP R. ]. White, Waterloo to Peterloo (1957; London, 1963). YS Kenneth Neill Cameron, The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical (1950; London, 1951).
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