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This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 25th of March 1916.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images and have any stories or information to add please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
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William Stone Images - Limited Edition Fine Art Prints
Fine Art Photography Prints & Luxury Wall Art:
Our presence on flickr is to showcase our catalogue, we have selected pictures on our website, but can always add more depending on the requests we receive:
We do wedding photography and videography:
We do once in a while have discounted luxury fine art, please do keep checking:
All prints though us is put through a rigorous set of quality control standards long before we ever ship it to your front door. We only create gallery-quality images, and you'll receive your print in perfect condition with a lifetime guarantee.
All images on Flickr have been specifically published in a lower grade quality to amber our copyright being infringed. We have 4096x pixel full sized quality on all our photos and any of them could be ordered in high grade museum quality grade and a discount applied if the voucher WS-100 is used. Any image seen on flickr can be printed in museum grade quality, use the unique reference at the bottom of the photo description when contacting us:
We do plan future trips and do catalogue our past ones:
In our galleries you will find some amazing fine art photography for sale as limited edition and open edition, gallery quality prints. Only the finest materials and archival methods are used to produce these stunning photographic works of art.
Some of the gear we use at William Stone Fine Art are listed here:
Some of our latest work & more!
Embedded galleries within a gallery on various aspects of Photography:
We celebrate light in our pictures. Understanding how light interacts with the camera is paramount to the work we do. The temperature, intensity and source of light can wield different photography effect on the same subject or scene; add ISO, aperture and speed, the camera, the lens type, focal length and filters…the combination is varied and multi-layered and if you know how to use them all, you will come to appreciate that all lights are useful, even those surrounded by a lot of darkness.
We are guided by three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, our longing to capture in print, that which is beautiful, the constant search for the one picture, and constant barrage of new equipment and style of photography. These passions, like great winds, have blown us across the globe in search of the one and we do understand the one we do look for might be this picture right here for someone else out there.
We want to thank you for your interest in our work and thanks for visiting our work on Flickr, we do appreciate you and the contributions you make in furthering our interest in photography and on social media in general.
There are other aspects closely related to photography that we do embark on:
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The Postcard
A postally unused postcard published by J. Beagles & Co. of London E.C., with photography by the Stereoscopic Co. The card is a real high-definition photograph, and it has a divided back which means that it was published after September 1902.
The firm of J. Beagles & Co. was started by John Beagles (1844-1909). The company produced a variety of postcards including an extensive catalogue of celebrity (stage and screen) portrait postcards. After Beagle’s death, the business continued under its original name until it closed in 1939.
Sir John Martin-Harvey
Sir John Martin-Harvey (22nd. June 1863 – 14th. May 1944), known before his knighthood in 1921 as John Martin Harvey, was an English stage and screen actor.
The Early Years
Born in Bath Street, Wivenhoe, Essex, he was the son of John Harvey, a yacht-designer and shipbuilder, and Margaret Diana Mary (née Goyder). His father expected him to follow his own profession, but Martin-Harvey had his sights set on the stage.
One of his father's clients was the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, and it was through Gilbert that young Martin-Harvey met his first teacher, John Ryder.
Martin-Harvey joined Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre company in 1882. For many years he played only minor parts in Irving's productions.
Early on in Irving's company, when cast as the attendant to the messenger in the scene with Beatrice in 'Much Ado About Nothing', Martin-Harvey decided that here was his opportunity to be more than a mere extra with a non-speaking part:
"I bought a remarkable feather and
wore it in my hat, and on the day of
the dress rehearsal I painted on my
face a very elaborate moustache.
Alas! my efforts were unavailing.
I expect in Irving's critical eyes I was
a figure of fun.
Irving pointed his lean forefinger at
me, and with that dreadful preliminary,
'Ha, hm,' of his, he growled. "Take out
that boy."
I had to come on with the crowd as
usual."
Martin's most famous play was first produced at the Lyceum on the 16th. February 1899. This was 'The Only Way', an adaptation of Charles Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities' in which he played the lead role of Sydney Carton.
Many other plays followed, along with many tours in both Great Britain and North America. His success was always greater in Canada than the United States.
The Later Years
After Sir Henry Irving's death in 1905, Martin-Harvey continued to revive his old manager's plays, often using Irving's own props which he had bought.
These plays included 'The Bells' and 'The Lyons Mail'. His early successes included Palléas in Maeterlinck's 'Palléas and Melisande', with Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Melisande and incidental music written for the production by Gabriel Fauré.
His later successes included 'A Cigarette-maker's Romance', Oedipus (in Max Reinhardt's Covent Garden production), Shaw's 'The Devil's Disciple' and Maeterlinck's 'The Burgomaster of Stilemonde'.
'The Corsican Brothers'
Sir John also appeared in The Corsican Brothers.
The Corsican Brothers is a novella by Alexandre Dumas, first published in 1844. It is the story of two conjoined brothers who, though separated with a scalpel at birth, can still feel each other's pains. It has been adapted many times on the stage and in film.
The story starts in March 1841, when the narrator travels to Corsica and stays at the home of the widow Savilia de Franchi. She is the mother of former conjoined twins Louis and Lucien. Louis is a lawyer in Paris, while Lucien clings to his Corsican roots and stays at his mother's home.
The brothers were separated at birth by a doctor. Despite being separated, Louis and Lucien can still feel each other's emotions, even at a distance. Lucien explains he has a mission to undertake, with reluctance. He has to mediate in a vendetta between the Orlandi and Colona families and invites the narrator to accompany him and meet the head of the Orlandi family.
The play 'The Corsican Brothers', by Dion Boucicault, based on the story, was first seen in 1852.
'The Only Way'
Martin-Harvey and his wife Angelita worked on an adaptation of 'A Tale of Two Cities', later involving playwright Freeman Wills and Irish clergyman Canon Frederick Langbridge.
There was already a play called 'Sidney Carton, or a Tale of Two Cities' and it was Angelita who came up with the title 'The Only Way'.
By the time he retired, Martin-Harvey claimed to have performed 'The Only Way' more than 3,000 times, though this would not have been possible in reality.
'The Only Way' was made into a film in 1927 that was shot at Twickenham Studios and was a commercial success. It starred Martin Harvey in the lead role.
Martin-Harvey's Business Interests
One of Martin-Harvey's personal friends was theatre manager William Morton. In 1902 Morton's Ltd. was formed to build the Alexandra Theatre in Hull. Martin-Harvey was made one of five directors, investing £1,000, and remained so until the theatre was sold in 1935.
Martin-Harvey and his touring company paid an annual visit to Hull and to Morton's theatres, which also included the Theatre Royal and The Grand Opera House.
Martin-Harvey's Personal life
In 1889 he married Angelita Helena Maria de Silva Ferro, daughter of a Chilean consul and a fellow actor in Irving's company who used the stage name Miss N. de Silva. They had two children, Muriel Martin-Harvey and Michael Martin-Harvey, both successful actors.
Martin-Harvey and The Great War
During the Great War, Martin-Harvey and his wife toured the country giving military recruitment lectures and raising money for the Red Cross and other charities, most notably the Nation's Fund for Nurses.
The couple raised enough money to buy a building for the College of Nursing in 1920 which became a rest home for nurses.
Notable Films of Martin-Harvey
Notable films featuring Sir John Martin-Harvey include:
- A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1913)
- The Broken Melody (1916)
- The Breed of the Treshams (1920)
- The Only Way (1927)
- The Burgomaster of Stilemonde (1929)
- The Lyons Mail (1931)
Death of Sir John Martin-Harvey
Sir John Martin-Harvey died in 1944 at his home in East Sheen, Richmond, Surrey, aged 80.
Please do not reproduce, publish or otherwise use this image in any way without my prior written permission. © All rights reserved
This small, 20-page brochure is undated, but was probably published around the release of the Selectric Composer in 1966. This copy is in very poor condition but I grabbed it anyway because I hadn’t seen it before and it may be the Composer’s first type specimen. Compare to IBM Selectric Composer Type Designs, March 1968 and IBM Selectric Composer Type Style Portfolio, May 1970.
Typefaces shown:
Aldine Roman
Bodoni
Press Roman
Univers (Frutiger’s own modification commissioned by IBM)
ENGLISH:
I've chosen my best photos of Maranhão trip and published them in Maranhão, images of a Brazilian paradise, a visual recollection of the state of Maranhão, from the crumbling buildings of its capital, São Luís to the mesmerizing and unique landscapes of the Lençóis Maranhenses, through the fascinating celebration of the bumba-meu-boi festival .
------------------
ESPAÑOL:
He seleccionado mis mejores fotos del Maranhão y las he publicado en Maranhão, imágenes de un paraíso brasileño un recuerdo visual del estado de Maranhão, desde los decrépitos edificios de su capital, São Luís a los fascinantes y únicos paisajes de los Lençóis Maranhenses, pasando por la increíble celebración del festival del bumba-meu-boi.
Suspended Animation Classic #624 First published December 10, 2000 (#50) (Dates are approximate)
Comics Legend Graham Ingels
By Michael Vance
His was a different world.
His time was different. Born in 1915, Graham Ingels became a comic book artist in 1942 during their first surge in popularity. At sixteen, Ingels had already painted theatrical displays. At twenty, he was active as a freelance artist. After a discharge from the Navy, Ingels produced illustrations for pulp magazines for a year before becoming a comics editor.
His talent was different. It was EC publisher William Gaines and EC artist, writer and editor Al Feldstein who would bring Ingels fame as “Ghastly”. That was his trademark signature on covers and interior stories in EC’s Crime SuspenStories, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt. It was his incredible, unique talent that earned Ingels a fame that remains undiminished by time or his death.
Graham Ingels became the greatest horror artist in comic book history. His scratchy, fine lines draped everything he drew in cobwebs, shadows and decadence. A subtle, physical deformity in almost every character, many of who were barely more than parchment flesh stretched over arthritic bone, made his readers’ skin crawl. His Victorian houses tottered on the verge of collapse, and even animals and vegetation smelled of Gothic decay.
He was the master of atmosphere, his settings alone producing more shudders than any gory movie.
Ingles work included: “Lost World”, “Sea Devil”, “Commando Ranger”, “Clipper Kirk”, “Suicide Smith”, “Auro, Lord of Jupiter” (Fiction House, 1942-’49); Heroic #39 (Eastern Color, 1946); covers, Startling, “Lance Lewis”, “Tygra” (Pines, 1947); covers, “The Duke”, Trail Colt, U.S. Marshall (ME, 1048-’49); western, crime, love, horror, sf, New Directions titles (EC, 1948-’56); “Outlaws” (DS, 1948); Waterloo, Classics Illustrated Special Issues (Gilberton); Treasure Chest, western (Pflaum, 1957) and work at Fox Comics (1948).
The work of Graham Ingels is highly recommended.
Some older comics are expensive or difficult to locate. Price guides or comics dealers help. Comics shops, conventions, mail order companies and trade journals are good sources. Prices vary; shop around.
© sergione infuso - all rights reserved
follow me on www.sergione.info
You may not modify, publish or use any files on
this page without written permission and consent.
-----------------------------
Gli Scorpions festeggiano i 50 anni di carriera con un tour chiamato "Return to Forever - 50th Anniversary" l’11 novembre al Mediolanum Forum di Assago.
C'era una volta un gruppo di amici che decise, nella loro Hannover, di fondare un gruppo per unire così l'unica, fortissima passione comune: la musica. Nascono così gli Scorpions, giusto il tempo di fare la storia della musica rock universale e arrivare, oggi, ad annunciare un grande concerto evento per festeggiare cinquant'anni di carriera.
Wind Of Change, oppure Still Loving You, due delle pagine della musica rock firmate Scorpions e che hanno influenzato intere generazioni. Una scalata al successo lenta e costante, da Fly to the rainbow a Love at the first sting, raggiungendo il mondo intero, Giappone compreso, con il loro progetto destinato all'Estremo Oriente Tokyo Tapes. Protagonisti del primissimo Rock in Rio (era il 1980), collaboratori, al fianco di Roger Waters dell'allestimento berlinese di The wall oppure in giro, concerto su concerto, con un lungo tour al fianco di Alice Cooper. Sperimentano suoni techno-pop, dopo più acustici, non sfuggono a concept-album. Tutto questo rappresenta la colonna sonora di un vero successo che compie mezzo secolo.
Tra i massimi esponenti storici del hard & heavy, la band ha venduto in oltre quarant'anni di attività più di 100 milioni di dischi nel mondo ed è considerata come una delle maggiori realtà musicali della storia musicale tedesca e mondiale per i generi hard rock ed heavy metal.
Rudolf Schenker - chitarra
Klaus Meine - voce
Matthias Jabs - chitarra
James Kottak - percussioni
Paweł Mąciwoda - basso
Originally published on Volant Magazine
Photo Simone Chiappinelli
Model Emilio @ NoLogo
Stylist Federica Zangelmi
MUA Valentina Cappelletti
Instagram: www.instagram.com/lord_orph/
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This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 9th of September 1915.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images and have any stories and information to add please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
On the side of Ben's Chili Bowl
Published in Photos from PoPville – Ben’s Cosby Mural Commentary | PoPville
Published in Bill Cosby Still Gets Free Food at Ben’s Chili Bowl - City Desk
Published in Bill Cosby and the New Meaning of Integrity -
This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 11th of November 1915.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
Advertisement published in the magazine "l'Illustration" dedicated to the 1928 motor show.
The brand, which sold very little in France, was then known as the symbol of the American luxury car.
Annonce publicitaire publiée dans la revue "l'Illustration" consacrée au salon de l'automobile de 1928.
La marque, très peu vendue en France, était alors connue comme le symbole de la voiture Américaine de Grand Luxe.
Australian Embassy
Published in Australian Consular Officials Reveal Dumbest Requests | The Diplomat
Suspended Animation Classic #25
First published on Sun. June 25, 1989
Something for Everyone
By Michael Vance
Not all old comic books are worth thousands of dollars. In fact, there are hundreds of affordable titles that are entertaining, stretching even back into the 1940s!
The following choices are certainly tinged with a man’s nostalgia who first read these books with the sense of wonder of an inexperienced boy.
For teenagers and adults, I highly recommend the first half-dozen “Mad” paperbacks. These reprint much of the material edited, written, or drawn by Harvey Kurtzman from the early 1950s.
Kurtzman’s parodies and satires are brilliant, representing “Mad” at the peak of its creative power. The art and story are a high-water mark for comics, and many of these artists are now world famous. Inexpensive copies can be found at used bookstores. Look for “The Bedside Mad”, “Son of Mad”, “Like Mad” and “The Ideas of Mad”.
My seven-year-old daughter loves the art and story of Michael Esposito and Ross Andru in “Wonder Woman” comics. Choose from issues #111 to #157, published from 1960 to 1964. You’ll enter a world of mermen, bird-boys, Amazons, and gigantic Rocs.
These fantasy books were created for young children, and they’re still as fresh, imaginative, exciting and innocent as when they were new nineteen years ago. These fun issues in good, readable condition can be found at $1.50 or less in many comic book shops.
There’s also a wealth of material for children (secretly loved by lots of adults) that finds its way into the 25 cent boxes at comics shops. That’s an incredibly inexpensive price to pay for spending many wonderful hours reading to a child on your lap, teaching them to love to read in the process.
It’s great entertainment for long car trips or hospital stays. And you won’t go wrong if you choose from titles like “Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories”, “Bugs Bunny”, “Casper the Friendly Ghost”, “Hot Stuff” and “Archie” comics.
One of the first published depictions of cyborgs:
“On the moon cyborgs unreel a cable to explosives for a seismic blast. On the front cyborg’s belt, tubes pump chemicals to his blood to control his blood pressure, pulse, energy, tranquility, blood sugar, body temperature, radiation tolerance. Pumps obey sensors like the radiation counter in his left thigh or blood-pressure gauge in his right thigh. His heart, in the X-ray view, sends blood to the implanted converter which remakes oxygen and carbon from carbon dioxide, taking the place of lungs. On the back of the other cyborg are a food supply, master fuel cell, food processor and wastes canister.” [Image description]
“Striding buoyantly across the low-gravity surface of the moon, there may someday be strange new men – part human, part machine – like the ones above. They will have a strange name: CYBORGS (for CYBernetic ORGanisms). Cyborgs, according to a daring new idea, will be men whose body organs and systems are automatically adjusted for life in unearthly environments by artificial organs and senses. Some of these devices will be attached, others implanted by surgery. With their aid cyborgs can dispense with clumsy, easy-to-puncture space suits in which earth conditions are re-created. Instead, they can move about safely wearing not much more than they would at home . . .” [Opening paragraph]
Fred Freeman (1907-1988) was a graphic artist who designed and illustrated books on naval history, space exploration and other subjects. He was a successful commercial artist in New York City from the late 1920's through the 30's, doing many illustrations and magazine covers for publications including The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's.
After serving in the United States Navy during World War II, he turned mainly to book design and illustration. He illustrated books on submarines and destroyers from World War II, for the United States Naval Institute. In 1956, with Theodore Roscoe, he designed the ''Picture History of the U.S. Navy,'' published by Charles Scribner's Sons. In 1960, he illustrated a children's book, ''First Men to the Moon,'' written by the scientist, Werner von Braun.
Using Silhouette Zebra background, tag, and sentiment.
Blogged: sarahjmoerman.blogspot.ca/2013/02/born-to-be-wild-card.html
My Solitude photo was published in the November issue of DP - Arte Fotográfica.
DP is the Portuguese version of Digital Photographer Magazine.
Pure joy :)
Group pic ⛸ - Jordyn Jones Photo | Published by Social Media: www.instagram.com/p/Bqu86uRnbLf/ | Website: www.jordynonline.com | Official Website: www.jordynjonesofficial.com | Tags: #jordynjones #jordyn #jones #actress #model #singer #dancer #designer
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard published by the Bodleian Library and printed at the Oxford University Press.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born on the 4th. August 1792, was one of the major English Romantic poets.
A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets, including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats.
American literary critic Harold Bloom describes Shelley as:
"A superb craftsman, a lyric poet without
rival, and surely one of the most advanced
sceptical intellects ever to write a poem."
Shelly's reputation fluctuated during the 20th. century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist, and materialist ideas in his work.
Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode to the West Wind" (1819), "To a Skylark" (1820), the philosophical essay "The Necessity of Atheism" written alongside his friend T. J. Hogg (1811), and the political ballad "The Mask of Anarchy" (1819).
Shelley's other major works include the verse drama The Cenci (1819) and long poems such as Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1815), Julian and Maddalo (1819), Adonais (1821), Prometheus Unbound (1820) - widely considered his masterpiece - Hellas (1822), and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822).
Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues.
Much of his poetry and prose was not published in his lifetime, or only published in expurgated form, due to the risk of prosecution for political and religious libel.
From the 1820's, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist, and radical political circles, and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Bernard Shaw.
Shelley's life was marked by family crises, ill health, and a backlash against his atheism, political views and defiance of social conventions. He went into permanent self-exile in Italy in 1818, and over the next four years produced what Leader and O'Neill call:
"Some of the finest poetry
of the Romantic period".
His second wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of Frankenstein.
Shelley died in a boating accident in 1822 at the age of 29.
Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Early Years
Shelley was born at Field Place, Warnham, West Sussex. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley (1753–1844), a Whig Member of Parliament for Horsham from 1790 to 1792 and for Shoreham between 1806 and 1812, and his wife, Elizabeth Pilfold (1763–1846), the daughter of a successful butcher.
Percy had four younger sisters and one much younger brother. Shelley's early childhood was sheltered and mostly happy. He was particularly close to his sisters and his mother, who encouraged him to hunt, fish and ride.
At the age of six, he was sent to a day school run by the vicar of Warnham church, where he displayed an impressive memory and gift for languages.
In 1802 he entered the Syon House Academy in Brentford. Shelley was bullied and unhappy at the school, and sometimes responded with violent rage. He also began suffering from the nightmares, hallucinations and sleep walking that were periodically to afflict him throughout his life.
Shelley developed an interest in science which supplemented his voracious reading of tales of mystery, romance and the supernatural. During his holidays at Field Place, his sisters were often terrified by being subjected to his experiments with gunpowder, acids and electricity. Back at school he blew up a fence with gunpowder.
In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, a period which he later recalled with loathing. He was subjected to particularly severe mob bullying which the perpetrators called "Shelley-baits".
A number of biographers and contemporaries have attributed the bullying to Shelley's aloofness, nonconformity and refusal to take part in fagging. His peculiarities and violent rages earned him the nickname "Mad Shelley".
His interest in the occult and science continued, and contemporaries describe him giving an electric shock to a master, blowing up a tree stump with gunpowder and attempting to raise spirits with occult rituals.
In his senior years, Shelley came under the influence of a part-time teacher, Dr James Lind, who encouraged his interest in the occult, and introduced him to liberal and radical authors.
Shelley also developed an interest in Plato and idealist philosophy which he pursued in later years through self-study. According to Richard Holmes, Shelley, by his leaving year, had gained a reputation as a classical scholar and a tolerated eccentric.
In his last term at Eton, his first novel Zastrozzi appeared and he had established a following among his fellow students. Prior to enrolling at University College, Oxford in October 1810, Shelley completed Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (written with his sister Elizabeth), the verse melodrama The Wandering Jew and the Gothic novel St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (published 1811).
At Oxford Shelley attended few lectures, instead spending long hours reading and conducting scientific experiments in the laboratory he set up in his room. He met a fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who became his closest friend.
Shelley became increasingly politicised under Hogg's influence, developing strong radical and anti-Christian views. Such views were dangerous in the reactionary political climate prevailing during Britain's war with Napoleonic France, and Shelley's father warned him against Hogg's influence.
In the winter of 1810–1811, Shelley published a series of anonymous political poems and tracts: Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, The Necessity of Atheism (written in collaboration with Hogg) and A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things.
Shelley mailed The Necessity of Atheism to all the bishops and heads of colleges at Oxford, and he was called to appear before the college's fellows, including the Dean, George Rowley. His refusal to answer questions put by college authorities regarding whether or not he authored the pamphlet resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on the 25th. March 1811, along with Hogg.
Hearing of his son's expulsion, Shelley's father threatened to cut all contact with Shelley unless he agreed to return home and study under tutors appointed by him. Shelley's refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.
Shelley's Marriage to Harriet Westbrook
In late December 1810, Shelley had met Harriet Westbrook, a pupil at the same boarding school as Shelley's sisters. They corresponded frequently that winter, and also after Shelley had been expelled from Oxford.
Shelley expounded his radical ideas on politics, religion and marriage to Harriet, and they gradually convinced each other that she was oppressed by her father and at school.
Shelley's infatuation with Harriet developed in the months following his expulsion, when he was under severe emotional strain due to the conflict with his family, his bitterness over the breakdown of his romance with his cousin Harriet Grove, and his unfounded belief that he might be suffering from a fatal illness.
At the same time, Harriet Westbrook's elder sister Eliza, to whom Harriet was very close, encouraged the young girl's romance with Shelley. Shelley's correspondence with Harriet intensified in July, while he was holidaying in Wales, and in response to her urgent pleas for his protection, he returned to London in early August.
Putting aside his philosophical objections to matrimony, he left with the sixteen-year-old Harriet for Edinburgh on the 25th. August 1811, and they were married there on the 28th.
Hearing of the elopement, Harriet's father, John Westbrook, and Shelley's father cut off the allowances of the bride and groom. Shelley's father believed that his son had married beneath him, as Harriet's father had earned his fortune in trade, and was the owner of a tavern and coffee house.
Surviving on borrowed money, Shelley and Harriet stayed in Edinburgh for a month, with Hogg living under the same roof. The trio left for York in October, and Shelley went on to Sussex to settle matters with his father, leaving Harriet behind with Hogg.
Shelley returned from his unsuccessful excursion to find that Harriet's sister Eliza had moved in with Harriet and Hogg. Harriet confessed that Hogg had tried to seduce her while Shelley had been away. Accordingly Shelley, Harriet and Eliza soon left for Keswick in the Lake District, leaving Hogg in York.
At this time Shelley was involved in an intense platonic relationship with Elizabeth Hitchener, a 28-year-old unmarried schoolteacher of advanced views, with whom he had been corresponding. Hitchener, whom Shelley called the "sister of my soul" and "my second self", became his confidante and intellectual companion as he developed his views on politics, religion, ethics and personal relationships.
Shelley proposed that Elizabeth join him, Harriet and Eliza in a communal household where all property would be shared.
The Shelleys and Eliza spent December and January in Keswick where Shelley visited Robert Southey whose poetry he admired. Southey was taken with Shelley, even though there was a wide gulf between them politically, and predicted great things for him as a poet.
Southey also informed Shelley that William Godwin, author of Political Justice, which had greatly influenced him in his youth, and which Shelley also admired, was still alive. Shelley wrote to Godwin, offering himself as his devoted disciple. Godwin, who had modified many of his earlier radical views, advised Shelley to reconcile with his father, become a scholar before he published anything else, and give up his avowed plans for political agitation in Ireland.
Meanwhile, Shelley had met his father's patron, Charles Howard, 11th. Duke of Norfolk, who helped secure the reinstatement of Shelley's allowance.
With Harriet's allowance also restored, Shelley now had the funds for his Irish venture. Their departure for Ireland was precipitated by increasing hostility towards the Shelley household from their landlord and neighbours who were alarmed by Shelley's scientific experiments, pistol shooting and radical political views.
As tension mounted, Shelley claimed he had been attacked in his home by ruffians, an event which might have been real, or a delusional episode triggered by stress. This was the first of a series of episodes in subsequent years where Shelley claimed to have been attacked by strangers during periods of personal crisis.
Early in 1812, Shelley wrote, published and personally distributed in Dublin three political tracts: An Address, to the Irish People; Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists; and Declaration of Rights. He also delivered a speech at a meeting of O'Connell's Catholic Committee in which he called for Catholic emancipation, repeal of the Acts of Union and an end to the oppression of the Irish poor. Reports of Shelley's subversive activities were sent to the Home Secretary.
Returning from Ireland, the Shelley household travelled to Wales, then Devon, where they again came under government surveillance for distributing subversive literature. Elizabeth Hitchener joined the household in Devon, but several months later had a falling out with the Shelleys and left.
The Shelley household settled in Tremadog, Wales in September 1812, where Shelley worked on Queen Mab, a utopian allegory with extensive notes preaching atheism, free love, republicanism and vegetarianism. The poem was published the following year in a private edition of 250 copies, although few were initially distributed, because of the risk of prosecution for seditious and religious libel.
In February 1813, Shelley claimed he was attacked in his home at night. The incident might have been real, a hallucination brought on by stress, or a hoax staged by Shelley in order to escape government surveillance, creditors and his entanglements in local politics. The Shelleys and Eliza fled to Ireland, then London.
Back in England, Shelley's debts mounted as he tried unsuccessfully to reach a financial settlement with his father. On the 23rd. June 1813, Harriet gave birth to a girl, Eliza Ianthe Shelley, but in the following months the relationship between Shelley and his wife deteriorated.
Shelley resented the influence that Harriet's sister had over her, while Harriet was alienated by Shelley's close friendship with an attractive widow, Harriet Boinville, and her daughter Cornelia Turner.
Following Ianthe's birth, the Shelleys moved frequently across London, Wales, the Lake District, Scotland and Berkshire to escape creditors and to search for a home.
In March 1814, Shelley remarried Harriet in London to settle any doubts about the legality of their Edinburgh wedding and to secure the rights of their child. Nevertheless, the Shelleys lived apart for most of the following months, and Shelley reflected bitterly on:
"My rash & heartless union with Harriet".
Shelley's Elopement with Mary Godwin
In May 1814, Shelley began visiting his mentor William Godwin almost daily, and soon fell in love with Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Godwin and the late feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft.
Shelley and Mary declared their love for each other during a visit to her mother's grave in the churchyard of St. Pancras Old Church on the 26th. June 1814. When Shelley told William Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Godwin's daughter, his mentor banished him from the house, and forbade Mary from seeing him.
Shelley and Mary however eloped to Europe on the 28th. July 1814, taking Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Before leaving, Shelley had secured a loan of £3,000, but had left most of the funds at the disposal of Godwin and Harriet, who was now pregnant. The financial arrangement with Godwin led to rumours that he had sold his daughters to Shelley.
Shelley, Mary Godwin and Claire made their way across war-ravaged France where Shelley wrote to Harriet, asking her to meet them in Switzerland with the money he had left for her.
However, hearing nothing from Harriet in Switzerland, and being unable to secure sufficient funds or suitable accommodation, the three travelled to Germany and Holland before returning to England on the 13th. September 1814.
Shelley spent the next few months trying to raise loans and avoid bailiffs. Mary was pregnant, lonely, depressed and ill. Her mood was not improved when she heard that, on the 30th. November 1814, Harriet had given birth to Charles Bysshe Shelley, heir to the Shelley fortune and baronetcy.
This was followed, in early January 1815, by news that Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bysshe, had died leaving an estate worth £220,000. The settlement of the estate, and a financial settlement between Shelley and his father (now Sir Timothy), however, was not concluded until April the following year.
In February 1815, Mary gave premature birth to a baby girl who died ten days later, deepening her depression. In the following weeks, Mary became close to Hogg who temporarily moved into the household.
Shelley was almost certainly having a sexual relationship with Claire at this time, and it is possible that Mary, with Shelley's encouragement, was also having a sexual relationship with Hogg. In May Claire left the household, at Mary's insistence, to reside in Lynmouth.
In August 1815 Shelley and Mary moved to Bishopsgate where Shelley worked on Alastor, a long poem in blank verse based on the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Alastor was published in an edition of 250 in early 1816 to poor sales and largely unfavourable reviews from the conservative press.
On the 24th. January 1816, Mary gave birth to William Shelley. Percy was delighted to have another son, but was suffering from the strain of prolonged financial negotiations with his father, Harriet and William Godwin. Shelley showed signs of delusional behaviour, and was contemplating an escape to the continent.
Lord Byron
Claire initiated a sexual relationship with Lord Byron in April 1816, just before his self-exile on the continent, and then arranged for Byron to meet Shelley, Mary and her in Geneva.
Shelley admired Byron's poetry, and had sent him Queen Mab and other poems. Shelley's party arrived in Geneva in May and rented a house close to Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Byron was staying. There Shelley, Byron and the others engaged in discussions about literature, science and "various philosophical doctrines".
One night, while Byron was reciting Coleridge's Christabel, Shelley suffered a severe panic attack with hallucinations. The previous night Mary had had a more productive vision or nightmare which inspired her novel Frankenstein.
Shelley and Byron then took a boating tour around Lake Geneva, which inspired Shelley to write his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", his first substantial poem since Alastor.
A tour of Chamonix in the French Alps inspired "Mont Blanc", which has been described as an atheistic response to Coleridge's "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamoni". During this tour, Shelley often signed guest books with a declaration that he was an atheist. These declarations were seen by other British tourists, including Southey, which hardened attitudes against Shelley back home.
Relations between Byron and Shelley's party became strained when Byron was told that Claire was pregnant with his child. Shelley, Mary, and Claire left Switzerland in late August, with arrangements for the expected baby still unclear, although Shelley made provision for Claire and the baby in his will.
In January 1817 Claire gave birth to a daughter by Byron who she named Alba, but later renamed Allegra in accordance with Byron's wishes.
Shelley's Marriage to Mary Godwin
Shelley and Mary returned to England in September 1816, and in early October they heard that Mary's half-sister Fanny Imlay had killed herself. Mary believed that Fanny had been in love with Shelley, and Shelley himself suffered depression and guilt over her death, writing:
"Friend had I known thy secret grief
Should we have parted so."
Further tragedy followed in December 1816 when Shelley's estranged wife Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Harriet, pregnant and living alone at the time, believed that she had been abandoned by her new lover. In her suicide letter she asked Shelley to take custody of their son Charles but to leave their daughter in her sister Eliza's care.
Shelley married Mary Godwin on the 30 December 1816, despite his philosophical objections to the institution. The marriage was intended to help secure Shelley's custody of his children by Harriet and to placate Godwin who had refused to see Shelley and Mary because of their previous adulterous relationship.
After a prolonged legal battle, the Court of Chancery eventually awarded custody of Shelley and Harriet's children to foster parents, on the grounds that Shelley had abandoned his first wife for Mary without cause, and was an atheist.
In March 1817 the Shelleys moved to the village of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where Shelley's friend Thomas Love Peacock lived. The Shelley household included Claire and her baby Allegra, both of whose presence was resented by Mary. Shelley's generosity with money and increasing debts also led to financial and marital stress, as did Godwin's frequent requests for financial help.
On the 2nd. September 1817 Mary gave birth to a daughter, Clara Everina Shelley. Soon after, Shelley left for London with Claire, which increased Mary's resentment towards her step-sister. Shelley was arrested for two days in London over money he owed, and attorneys visited Mary in Marlowe over Shelley's debts.
Shelley was part of the literary and political circle that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and during this period he met William Hazlitt and John Keats. Shelley's major work during this time was Laon and Cythna, a long narrative poem featuring incest and attacks on religion.
It was hastily withdrawn after publication due to fears of prosecution for religious libel, and was re-edited and reissued as The Revolt of Islam in January 1818. Shelley also published two political tracts under a pseudonym: A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom (March 1817) and An Address to the People on the Death of Princess Charlotte (November 1817).
In December he wrote "Ozymandias", which is considered to be one of his finest sonnets, as part of a competition with friend and fellow poet Horace Smith.
Shelley in Italy
On the 12th. March 1818 the Shelleys and Claire left England:
"To escape its tyranny civil and religious".
A doctor had also recommended that Shelley go to Italy for his chronic lung complaint, and Shelley had arranged to take Claire's daughter, Allegra, to her father Byron who was now in Venice.
After travelling some months through France and Italy, Shelley left Mary and baby Clara at Bagni di Lucca (in today's Tuscany) while he travelled with Claire to Venice to see Byron and make arrangements for visiting Allegra.
Byron invited the Shelleys to stay at his summer residence at Este, and Shelley urged Mary to meet him there. Clara became seriously ill on the journey, and died on the 24th. September 1818 in Venice.
Following Clara's death, Mary fell into a long period of depression and emotional estrangement from Shelley.
The Shelleys moved to Naples on the 1st. December 1818, where they stayed for three months. During this period Shelley was ill, depressed and almost suicidal: a state of mind reflected in his poem "Stanzas written in Dejection – December 1818, Near Naples".
While in Naples, Shelley registered the birth and baptism of a baby girl, Elena Adelaide Shelley (born on the 27th. December 1818), naming himself as the father and falsely naming Mary as the mother.
The parentage of Elena has never been conclusively established. Biographers have variously speculated that she was adopted by Shelley to console Mary for the loss of Clara, that she was Shelley's child to Claire, that she was his child to his servant Elise Foggi, or that she was the child of a "mysterious lady" who had followed Shelley to the continent.
Shelley registered the birth and baptism on the 27th. February 1819, and the household left Naples for Rome the following day, leaving Elena with carers. Elena died in a poor suburb of Naples on the 9th. June 1820.
In Rome, Shelley was in poor health, probably suffering from nephritis and tuberculosis which later was in remission. Nevertheless, he made significant progress on three major works: Julian and Maddalo, Prometheus Unbound, and The Cenci.
Julian and Maddalo is an autobiographical poem which explores the relationship between Shelley and Byron, and analyses Shelley's personal crises of 1818 and 1819. The poem was completed in the summer of 1819, but was not published in Shelley's lifetime.
Prometheus Unbound is a long dramatic poem inspired by Aeschylus's retelling of the Prometheus myth. It was completed in late 1819 and published in 1820.
The Cenci is a verse drama of rape, murder and incest based on the story of the Renaissance Count Cenci of Rome and his daughter Beatrice. Shelley completed the play in September, and the first edition was published that year. It was to become one of his most popular works, and the only one to have two authorised editions during his lifetime.
Shelley's three-year-old son William died in June, probably of malaria. The new tragedy caused a further decline in Shelley's health, and deepened Mary's depression. On the 4th. August she wrote:
"We have now lived five years together;
and if all the events of the five years
were blotted out, I might be happy".
The Shelleys were now living in Livorno where, in September, Shelley heard of the Peterloo Massacre of peaceful protesters in Manchester. Within two weeks he had completed one of his most famous political poems, The Mask of Anarchy, and despatched it to Leigh Hunt for publication. Hunt, however, decided not to publish it for fear of prosecution for seditious libel. The poem was only officially published in 1832.
The Shelleys moved to Florence in October, where Shelley read a scathing review of the Revolt of Islam (and its earlier version Laon and Cythna) in the conservative Quarterly Review. Shelley was angered by the personal attack on him in the article which he erroneously believed had been written by Southey. His bitterness over the review lasted for the rest of his life.
On the 12th. November, Mary gave birth to a boy, Percy Florence Shelley. Around the time of Percy's birth, the Shelleys met Sophia Stacey, who was a ward of one of Shelley's uncles, and who was staying at the same pension as the Shelleys.
Sophia, a talented harpist and singer, formed a friendship with Shelley while Mary was preoccupied with her newborn son. Shelley wrote at least five love poems and fragments for Sophia including "Song Written for an Indian Air".
The Shelleys moved to Pisa in January 1820, ostensibly to consult a doctor who had been recommended to them. There they became friends with the Irish republican Margaret Mason (Lady Margaret Mountcashell) and her common-law husband George William Tighe. Mrs Mason became the inspiration for Shelley's poem "The Sensitive Plant", and Shelley's discussions with Mason and Tighe influenced his political thought and his critical interest in the population theories of Thomas Malthus.
In March Shelley wrote to friends that Mary was depressed, suicidal and hostile towards him. Shelley was also beset by financial worries, as creditors from England pressed him for payment and he was obliged to make secret payments in connection with his "Neapolitan charge" Elena.
Meanwhile, Shelley was writing A Philosophical View of Reform, a political essay which he had begun in Rome. The unfinished essay, which remained unpublished in Shelley's lifetime, has been called:
"One of the most advanced and
sophisticated documents of political
philosophy in the nineteenth century".
Another crisis erupted in June when Shelley claimed that he had been assaulted in the Pisan post office by a man accusing him of foul crimes. Shelley's biographer James Bieri suggests that this incident was possibly a delusional episode brought on by extreme stress, as Shelley was being blackmailed by a former servant, Paolo Foggi, over baby Elena.
It is likely that the blackmail was connected with a story spread by another former servant, Elise Foggi, that Shelley had fathered a child to Claire in Naples and had sent it to a foundling home. Shelley, Claire and Mary denied this story, and Elise later recanted.
In July, hearing that John Keats was seriously ill in England, Shelley wrote to the poet inviting him to stay with him at Pisa. Keats replied with hopes of seeing him, but instead, arrangements were made for Keats to travel to Rome.
In early July 1820, Shelley heard that baby Elena had died on 9 June. In the months following the post office incident and Elena's death, relations between Mary and Claire deteriorated, and Claire spent most of the next two years living separately from the Shelleys, mainly in Florence.
That December Shelley met Teresa (Emilia) Viviani, who was the 19-year-old daughter of the Governor of Pisa and who was living in a convent awaiting a suitable marriage. Shelley visited her several times over the next few months, and they started a passionate correspondence which dwindled after her marriage the following September. Emilia was the inspiration for Shelley's major poem Epipsychidion.
In March 1821 Shelley completed "A Defence of Poetry", a response to Peacock's article "The Four Ages of Poetry". Shelley's essay, with its famous conclusion "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", remained unpublished in his lifetime.
Following the death of Keats in 1821, Shelley wrote Adonais, which is considered to be one of the major pastoral elegies. The poem was published in Pisa in July 1821, but sold few copies.
Shelley went alone to Ravenna in early August to see Byron, making a detour to Livorno for a rendezvous with Claire. Shelley stayed with Byron for two weeks and invited the older poet to spend the winter in Pisa. After Shelley heard Byron read his newly completed fifth canto of Don Juan he wrote to Mary:
"I despair of rivalling Byron."
In November Byron moved into Villa Lanfranchi in Pisa, just across the river from the Shelleys. Byron became the centre of the "Pisan circle" which was to include Shelley, Thomas Medwin, Edward Williams and Edward Trelawny.
In the early months of 1822, Shelley became increasingly close to Jane Williams, who was living with her partner Edward Williams in the same building as the Shelleys.
Shelley wrote a number of love poems for Jane, including "The Serpent is Shut out of Paradise" and "With a Guitar, to Jane". Shelley's obvious affection for Jane was to cause increasing tension between Shelley, Edward Williams and Mary.
Claire arrived in Pisa in April at Shelley's invitation, and soon after they heard that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in Ravenna. The Shelleys and Claire then moved to Villa Magni, near Lerici on the shores of the Gulf of La Spezia.
Shelley acted as mediator between Claire and Byron over arrangements for the burial of their daughter, and the added strain led to Shelley having a series of hallucinations.
Mary almost died from a miscarriage on the 16th, June, her life only being saved by Shelley's effective first aid. Two days later Shelley wrote to a friend that there was no sympathy between Mary and him, and if the past and future could be obliterated he would be content in his boat with Jane and her guitar.
That same day he also wrote to Trelawny asking for prussic acid. The following week, Shelley woke the household with his screaming over a nightmare or hallucination in which he saw Edward and Jane Williams as walking corpses, and himself strangling Mary.
During this time, Shelley was writing his final major poem, the unfinished The Triumph of Life, which Harold Bloom has called:
"The most despairing poem he wrote".
The Death of Shelley
On the 1st. July 1822, Shelley and Edward Williams sailed in Shelley's new boat the Don Juan to Livorno where Shelley met Leigh Hunt and Byron in order to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal.
After the meeting, on the 8th. July, Shelley, Williams and their boat boy sailed out of Livorno for Lerici. A few hours later, the Don Juan and its inexperienced crew were lost in a storm. The vessel, an open boat, had been custom-built in Genoa for Shelley.
Mary Shelley declared in her "Note on Poems of 1822" that the design had a defect, and that the boat was never seaworthy. In fact, however, the Don Juan was overmasted; the sinking was due to a severe storm and poor seamanship of the three men on board.
Shelley's badly decomposed body washed ashore at Viareggio ten days later, and was identified by Trelawny from the clothing and a copy of Keats's Lamia in a jacket pocket. On the 16th. August, his body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio, and the ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome.
When news of Shelley's death reached England, the Tory London newspaper The Courier printed:
"Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry,
has been drowned; now he knows whether
there is God or no."
Shelley's ashes were reburied in a different plot at the cemetery in 1823. His grave bears the Latin inscription Cor Cordium (Heart of Hearts), and a few lines of "Ariel's Song" from Shakespeare's The Tempest:
'Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange'.
When Shelley's body was cremated on the beach, his presumed heart resisted burning, and was retrieved by Trelawny. The heart was possibly calcified from an earlier tubercular infection, or was perhaps his liver.
Trelawny gave the scorched organ to Hunt, who preserved it in spirits of wine and refused to hand it over to Mary. He finally relented, and the heart was eventually buried either at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth or in Christchurch Priory. Hunt also retrieved a piece of Shelley's jawbone which, in 1913, was given to the Shelley-Keats Memorial in Rome.
Shelley's Political, Religious and Ethical views
-- Politics
Shelley was a political radical who was influenced by thinkers such as Rousseau, Paine, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Leigh Hunt. He advocated Catholic Emancipation, republicanism, parliamentary reform, the extension of the franchise, freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, an end to aristocratic and clerical privilege, and a more equal distribution of income and wealth.
The views he expressed in his published works were often more moderate than those he advocated privately, because of the risk of prosecution for seditious libel and his desire not to alienate more moderate friends and political allies. Nevertheless, his political writings and activism brought him to the attention of the Home Office, and he came under government surveillance at various periods.
Shelley's most influential political work in the years immediately following his death was the poem Queen Mab, which included extensive notes on political themes. The work went through 14 official and pirated editions by 1845, and became popular in Owenist and Chartist circles. His longest political essay, A Philosophical View of Reform, was written in 1820, but not published until 1920.
-- Nonviolence
Shelley's advocacy of nonviolent resistance was largely based on his reflections on the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, and his belief that violent protest would increase the prospect of a military despotism.
Although Shelley sympathised with supporters of Irish independence, he did not support violent rebellion. In his early pamphlet An Address, to the Irish People (1812) he wrote:
"I do not wish to see things changed now,
because it cannot be done without violence,
and we may assure ourselves that none of
us are fit for any change, however good, if
we condescend to employ force in a cause
we think right."
In his later essay A Philosophical View of Reform, Shelley did concede that there were political circumstances in which force might be justified:
"The last resort of resistance is undoubtably [sic] insurrection. The right of insurrection is derived
from the employment of armed force to counteract
the will of the nation."
Shelley supported the 1820 armed rebellion against absolute monarchy in Spain, and the 1821 armed Greek uprising against Ottoman rule.
Shelley's poem "The Mask of Anarchy" (written in 1819, but first published in 1832) has been called:
"Perhaps the first modern statement of
the principle of nonviolent resistance".
Gandhi was familiar with the poem, and it is possible that Shelley had an indirect influence on Gandhi through Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.
-- Religion
Shelley was an avowed atheist, who was influenced by the materialist arguments in Holbach's Le Système de la Nature. His atheism was an important element of his political radicalism, as he saw organised religion as inextricably linked to social oppression.
The overt and implied atheism in many of his works raised a serious risk of prosecution for religious libel. His early pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism was withdrawn from sale soon after publication following a complaint from a priest. His poem Queen Mab, which includes sustained attacks on the priesthood, Christianity and religion in general, was twice prosecuted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1821. A number of his other works were edited before publication to reduce the risk of prosecution.
-- Free Love
Shelley's advocacy of free love drew heavily on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and the early work of William Godwin. In his notes to Queen Mab, he wrote:
"A system could not well have been
devised more studiously hostile to
human happiness than marriage."
He argued that:
"The children of unhappy marriages
are nursed in a systematic school of
ill-humour, violence and falsehood".
Shelley believed that the ideal of chastity outside marriage was "a monkish and evangelical superstition" which led to the hypocrisy of prostitution and promiscuity.
Shelley believed that "sexual connection" should be free among those who loved each other, and last only as long as their mutual love. Love should also be free, and not subject to obedience, jealousy and fear.
He denied that free love would lead to promiscuity and the disruption of stable human relationships, arguing that relationships based on love would generally be of long duration and marked by generosity and self-devotion.
When Shelley's friend T. J. Hogg made an unwanted sexual advance to Shelley's first wife Harriet, Shelley forgave him of his "horrible error" and assured him that he was not jealous. It is very likely that Shelley encouraged Hogg and Shelley's second wife Mary to have a sexual relationship.
-- Vegetarianism
Shelley converted to a vegetable diet in early March 1812 and sustained it, with occasional lapses, for the remainder of his life. Shelley's vegetarianism was influenced by ancient authors such as Hesiod, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Ovid and Plutarch, but more directly by John Frank Newton, author of The Return to Nature, or, A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen (1811).
Shelley wrote two essays on vegetarianism: A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813) and "On the Vegetable System of Diet" (written circa 1813–1815, but first published in 1929).
William Owen Jones argues that Shelley's advocacy of vegetarianism was strikingly modern, emphasising its health benefits, the alleviation of animal suffering, the inefficient use of agricultural land involved in animal husbandry, and the economic inequality resulting from the commercialisation of animal food production. Shelley's life and works inspired the founding of the Vegetarian Society in England (1847) and directly influenced the vegetarianism of George Bernard Shaw and perhaps Gandhi.
Reception and Influence of Shelley's Work
Shelley's work was not widely read in his lifetime outside a small circle of friends, poets and critics. Most of his poetry, drama and fiction was published in editions of only 250 copies which generally sold poorly. Only The Cenci went to an authorised second edition while Shelley was alive – in contrast, Byron's The Corsair (1814) sold out its first edition of 10,000 copies in one day.
The initial reception of Shelley's work in mainstream periodicals (with the exception of the liberal Examiner) was generally unfavourable. Reviewers often launched personal attacks on Shelley's private life and political, social and religious views, even when conceding that his poetry contained beautiful imagery and poetic expression.
There was also criticism of Shelley's intelligibility and style, Hazlitt describing it as:
"A passionate dream, a straining
after impossibilities, a record of fond
conjectures, a confused embodying
of vague abstraction".
Shelley's poetry soon however gained a wider audience in radical and reformist circles. Queen Mab became popular with Owenists and Chartists, and Revolt of Islam influenced poets sympathetic to the workers' movement such as Thomas Hood, Thomas Cooper and William Morris.
However, Shelley's mainstream following did not develop until a generation after his death. Bieri argues that editions of Shelley's poems published in 1824 and 1839 were edited by Mary Shelley to highlight her late husband's lyrical gifts and downplay his radical ideas. Matthew Arnold famously described Shelley as a "beautiful and ineffectual angel".
Shelley was a major influence on a number of important poets in the following decades, including Robert Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats. Shelley-like characters frequently appeared in nineteenth-century literature, such as Scythrop in Peacock's Nightmare Abbey, Ladislaw in George Eliot's Middlemarch, and Angel Clare in Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Twentieth-century critics such as Eliot, Leavis, Allen Tate and Auden variously criticised Shelley's poetry for deficiencies in style, "repellent" ideas, and immaturity of intellect and sensibility.
However, Shelley's critical reputation rose from the 1960's as a new generation of critics highlighted Shelley's debt to Spenser and Milton, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist and materialist ideas in his work.
American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as:
"A superb craftsman, a lyric poet
without rival, and surely one of the
most advanced sceptical intellects
ever to write a poem".
According to Donald H. Reiman:
"Shelley belongs to the great tradition
of Western writers that includes Dante,
Shakespeare and Milton".
John Lauritsen and Charles E. Robinson have argued that Shelley's contribution to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was extensive, and that he should be considered a collaborator or co-author.
However Professor Charlotte Gordon and others have disputed this contention. Fiona Sampson has said:
"In recent years Percy's corrections, visible
in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the
Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been
seized on as evidence that he must have
at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when
I examined the notebooks myself, I realised
that Percy did rather less than any line editor
working in publishing today."
Thoughts From Percy Shelley
"The soul's joy lies in doing."
"I have drunken deep of joy, And
I will taste no other wine tonight."
"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in
darkness and sings to cheer its own
solitude with sweet sounds."
"War is the statesman's game, the
priest's delight, the lawyer's jest,
the hired assassin's trade."
"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips."
"Fear not for the future,
weep not for the past."
"Our sincerest laughter with some
pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs
are those that tell of saddest thought."
"O, wind, if winter comes, can
can spring be far behind?"
Black Inc.Books used one of my photos as the cover for this book and credited me on the back cover. The book is only released in Australia and New Zealand - the book is about the coal boom in Australia. I was paid but that is secondary to being credited on the books back cover.
Created with fd's Flickr Toys
Apparently, I had the best photo of the worst thing in Nashville. But, as of yesterday, that worst thing (The I-65 Nathan B. Forrest statue which had no remaining defenders) was removed. It's actually a little bittersweet for me because it made me a little Internet famous, but I guess that won't happen any more. I'd sold the photo several times to comedy news shows, such as the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Quibi's America Today and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
This photo has appeared seemingly everywhere without a photo credit, such as all over Twitter. MSNBC never contacted me to use this photo, and they used it without permission. Hopefully, they find me and resolve this.
Original photo: flic.kr/p/iisrQ
Published by B. Kočí in Prague.
Scroll down to view the animated image. Animated gif generated with StereoPhotoMaker, a freeware program by Masuji Suto & David Sykes
cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soubor:Jindrich_Eckert_-_Prague_Cas...
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