Description
Book SynopsisThis biography offers a sympathetic and nuanced view of Shelley's tumultuous life, personality, and poetry.
Trade ReviewBieri's biography, which will surely be the definitive study of Shelley's life and work for many years to come, advances and enriches the state of contemporary Shelley studies in remarkable ways. -- Stephen C. Behrendt Romantic Circles 2007 Bieri's detailed presentations and thoughtful analyses make this an especially admirable volume... This could well become the standard Shelley biography. Essential. Choice 2005 It is the life of the subject that really carries this book. Shelley's life was indeed sensational, tragic, and still contains mystery enough to stretch the mind... The achievement of this book is in its gathering together and careful presentation of evidence. It is the unfortunate life of Shelley that grips the reader throughout. -- Sharon Ruston Times Literary Supplement 2005 The young Shelley that emerges from this well-researched biography, the outcome of many years' work, is in part the product of family personalities and tensions, but Bieri also respects the strength of Shelley's own opinions. -- Elizabeth Helsinger SEL Studies in English Literature 2006 A quietly magisterial feat of scholarship... All those who admire Shelley's work or wish to find out more about his life will gain much from these superbly researched and executed volumes. -- Michael O'Neill Keats-Shelley Journal 2006 An impressively comprehensive and frequently exciting work. -- Rebecca Oppenheimer Howard County Times 2009 This is a work sure to become an indispensable resource for the next generation of Shelley scholars. -- Rowland Weston Cercles 2010
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Part I: Youth's Unextinguished Fire, 1792–1816
1. The Politics of Paternity
2. "An Infancy Outlasting Manhood": Mother
3. The Young Prometheus
4. Exiled to Education
5. "Untaught Foresters": Eton Madness
6. Gothic "Wild Boy" and Harriet Grove
7. A Radical Poetic Identity
8. Icarus at Oxford
9. Doubling after the Fall: Harriet Westbrook and Elizabeth Hitchener
10. Elopement and Betrayal
11. Seeking New Fathers: Keswick
12. The Irish Expedition
13. Wandering Reformer
14. Phantasmagoria at Tanyrallt
15. Marital Disengagement
16. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
17. Births and Deaths
18. The Mirror of Self-Analysis
19. The Creative Swiss Summer
Part II: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822
20. The Dark Autumn of Suicides
21. Albion House: The Last English Year
22. "Paradise of exiles, Italy"
23. Euganean Isles of Misery: Venice
24. Paradise of Devils: Naples
25. Roman Tragedy and Creativity
26. Leghorn's "sad reality"
27. "a voice from over the Sea"
28. Florentine Voices: Unacknowledged Legislator and Sophia Stacey
29. Poetic Mothers: Pisa and Leghorn
30. Baths of San Giuliano
31. "Emily . . . my heart's sister"
32. "A Love in desolation masked"
33. The Last Pisan Winter
34. Drawn to the Sea
35. A "watery eclipse"
36. Life Terminable and Interminable
Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
