By Alexander Lock, Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts.
Today, 8 July 2022, marks the bicentenary of the loss of life of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). One of essentially the most politically radical of the Romantic poets, Shelley’s greatest identified works embody ‘Ozymandias’ (1818), ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ (1819), and ‘To the Skylark’ (1820).
Shelley died at sea, aged simply 29, on 8 July 1822. Earlier that month Shelley had sailed in his boat, the Don Juan, from his residence in San Terenzo to Livorno. On that voyage he was accompanied by a younger boat hand, Charles Vivian, and two shut buddies Edward Williams and naval officer Daniel Roberts. Shelley sailed to Livorno to satisfy Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron so as to develop their plans for the publication of a brand new anti-establishment journal The Liberal. Having accompanied Hunt to his lodging in Pisa, on 8 July Shelley, Williams and Vivian set sail for residence. Within just a few hours the Don Juan was caught in a extreme storm and all three males had been misplaced at sea.
Shelley’s physique washed ashore close to Viareggio on 18 July 1822 and William’s physique was discovered on the identical day three miles additional alongside the shore. The stays of Vivian had been found some weeks later. According to the good friend who discovered them, Edward John Trelawny, Shelley was recognized by the ‘volume of Sophocles’ he had ‘in one pocket, and Keats’s poems within the different’. Initially buried in quicklime, Shelley and Williams had been exhumed and cremated on 16 August 1822 on the seaside close to Viareggio the place they had been discovered. It had been determined that Shelley’s stays must be interred close to John Keats’ within the Protestant cemetery at Rome, while the stays of Williams had been to be returned to England. In order to facilitate the motion of their our bodies and overcome the Italian quarantine legal guidelines governing the burial of our bodies washed from the ocean, it was determined that the lads be cremated.
An idealised illustration of Shelley’s funeral in Louis Édouard Fournier, ‘The Funeral of Shelley’, 1889. Oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Public Domain
Following the funeral the ashes had been collected for burial by Edward Trelawney who had additionally taken a few of Shelley’s hair as a memento. He gave the hair and a few of the ashes as a memento to Claire Clairmont – Mary Shelley’s stepsister and Lord Byron’s lover who was staying with the Shelleys in San Terenzo. These gadgets would ultimately move to the British Library.
A lock of Shelley’s hair and fragments of his ashes that after belonged to Claire Clairmont, stepsister of Shelley’s spouse Mary Shelley
A lock of Shelley’s hair and fragments of his ashes that after belonged to Claire Clairmont, stepsister of Shelley’s spouse Mary Shelley
In the weeks main as much as his loss of life, Shelley suffered from visions of drowning and loss of life. In a letter written simply after Shelley died – now within the British Library as Ashley MS 5022 – his spouse Mary Shelley recounted how he dreamt that ‘the sea was rushing in’ and that he was strangling her while Edward Williams and his spouse Jane regarded on as corpses. After her husband’s drowning, Mary started to think about how his visions may need foretold the longer term.
To mark the bicentenary of the loss of life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, curators on the British Library labored with the poet Benjamin Zephaniah on a brand new Radio 4 programme ‘Percy Shelley, Reformer and Radical’. Presented by Zephaniah, the two half sequence brings a really private tackle Shelley’s work and the way it influenced his personal work and that of different poets. As a part of this recording we confirmed Zephaniah the unique draft of the ‘Mask of Anarchy’, Shelley’s annotated copy of ‘Queen Mab’, in addition to the hair and ashes of the poet taken from his funeral pyre.
Curator Alexander Lock with Benjamin Zephaniah and the ashes of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Episode 1 was broadcast on Sunday 3 July and episode 2 might be aired on Sunday 10 July, at 4.30pm on BBC Radio 4. The episodes might be out there on-line after broadcast.