Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Maureen Johnson

Dr. Ashley Bender

ENG 5243

10 Oct 2014

Lord George Gordon Byron Research Guide

Biography

Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) lived a difficult childhood, but grew up to write some of the Romantic era’s best known works that continue to be read and studied 200 years later. The son of Captain John Byron and his second wife Catherine, Byron was born 22 January 1788 in London (McGann). Byron’s childhood was marred by his father’s extensive debts that weren’t relieved by the captain’s death or by Byron’s inherited title of the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale, an estate that was worn down and debt ridden. Byron also had a congenital deformed right foot that plagued him until he was financially able to have to receive treatment in 1799. Byron considered his deformed foot “as the mark of satanic connection, referring to himself as le diable boiteux, the lame devil” (Eisler 13). These childhood difficulties didn’t prevent Byron from his life experiences, whether it was traveling the world or physical activities such as swimming. Both of these were combined when in 1810 he traveled to Constantinople and retraced Leander’s swimming route on the Hellesport (McGann).

Byron’s poetry career began during his time at Cambridge, which he attended sporadically throughout his young adult years. His first book of poetry was Fugitive Pieces, which he published privately. At Cambridge, he met his lifelong friend John Cam Hobhouse, who traveled Europe with Byron leading to the writing of Byron’s first major work, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Byron continued to write poetry as he became involved in multiple romantic relationships, including an affairs with married women like Lady Caroline Lamb, who famously described Byron as “Mad, bad and dangerous to know” (McGann). Byron scholar Jerome McGann suggests the same comments were given about Lady Lamb.

Phillips, Thomas. “George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron.”
Replica photo of Oil on Canvas.
The National Portrait Gallery. www.ngp.org/uk. Web. 30 Oct 2014.

In 1813, Byron reconnected with his half-sister Augusta. Rumors of an incestual relationship with Augusta persisted, but McGann (citing Byron biographer Leslie Marchand) say there is little legal evidence to support the claim. In 1815, the poet married Annabella Milbanke and the relationship was short-lived, but it did lead to a daughter, Augusta (Ada). Annabella and Byron became legally separated in 1816 and Byron never saw them again. After their separation, Byron had a brief affair with Claire Clairmont during a visit with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelly in Geneva. That union produced a daughter (Clara) Allegra Biron (McGann), but she died at the age of five.

After Geneva, Byron moved to Italy, where had more extramarital affairs and eventually settled into a long-term relationship with the married Teresa Guiccoli. While in Italy, his finances significantly improved and he was able to pay off debts that had plagued him most of his life. He also wrote Don Juan, a mock epic, which was considered so risqué that his longtime publisher was hesitant to publish, settling on printing it without naming an author or publisher. Despite its early controversy, modern scholars consider Don Juan one of Byron’s finest works. Byron spent most of the rest of life in Italy, until he decided to join with a group that was fighting for Greece’s independence. Byron traveled to Greece in February 1824, soon became ill and died 10 April 1824.

The Byronic hero, both a character used in his works and a public perception of the poet himself, remains part of the poet’s legacy. In defining Byronism, scholar William Harmon says that Byron created a persona that was  “a model of the mysteriously brooding, bitter, vaguely northern loner, sexually polymorphous, reckless and doomed, and always dangerous” (Harmon 70). Among the influences for the Byronic hero was Milton’s depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost. That influence was one of the reason’s that Byron’s contemporary Robert Southey called Byron a participant in the “Satanic School of Poetry” (McGann). Despite Southey’s criticism, the Byronic hero remains an enduring character type in literature and the movies with examples such as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Rochester in Jane Eyre, Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, and film noir detectives (Longman).

Works cited

“’Manfred and its Time’: The Byronic Hero.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature Vol. 2A, 5^th Ed. Ed. David Marosch, Kevin J.H. Dettmar, Susan Wolfson, Peter Manning, and Amelia Klein. Boston, et al.: Pearson, 2012. p 747-748. Print.

Eisler, Benita. Byron: Child of Passion, Food of Fame. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Print.

Harmon, William. A Handbook to Literature, 12th ed. Boston, et al: Longman, 2012. Print.

McGann, Jerome. “Byron, George Gordon Noel.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford U Press, 2004-14. Web. 13 Oct 2014.

Book Review

Dennis, Ian. Lord Byron and the History of Desire. Newark: U of Delaware Press, 2009. Print.

In Lord Byron and the History of Desire, Ian Dennis argues Lord Byron used desire in his works as a means to explore identity. Byron’s works provide an understanding of one’s own desire as a sort of freedom from social constrictions, whereas unrecognized desire leads to victimhood. Using the work of philosophers Eric Gans and Rene Girard, Dennis defines desire as subjects who are longing to imitate models, which he calls mimetic desire. This mimetic desire is the thread he uses to connect Byron’s works through their characters, behaviors, or locations. He suggests Bryon’s use of mimetic desire shows the poet’s insight into the construction of identities, both of those who desire to emulate models and those who are resistant to the models created in the poet’s works. Each of these types of desires manifests in different characters in the books and sometimes helps the poet’s audiences identify their own desires.

Dennis examines mimetic desire through chapters focusing on specific Byron works, devoting chapters to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the Eastern Tales, “Prometheus” and “The Prisoner of Chillon,” Manfred, Cain, and two chapters to Don Juan. For Child Harold’s Pilgrimage, Dennis says that the travel narrative takes readers on a virtual journey, allowing the audience to imitate the desire of experiencing travel (32). The identities of characters become further entangled in the Eastern Tales, The Gaior, Bride of Abydos, and The Corsair, which suggests that love triangles end in bloody conflict creating a person who is both a hero and a victim because the victors in those triangles never receive the love of the person whose affection they were trying to win (67). “Prometheus” and “The Prisoner of Chillon” represent what Dennis calls “metaphysical desire,” where there isn’t desire to emulate another, rather desire is internalized and focused on oneself (97). This same metaphysical desire can be seen in Manfred, who resists the influence of outsiders and focuses on his internal struggle (129).

Cain takes this internal desire and focuses on a desire for autonomy, which Satan exploits and used to control Cain. For Cain, “ … all identity and differentiation are submerged in the violent panic of proliferating mimetic desire” (145). Desire therefore takes control and erases identity. Dennis makes a similar case about the desire of autonomy over lack of control through the example of the marketplace in one of the two chapters on Don Juan. The loss of autonomy is the source of humor in Don Juan, which creates models and subjects (159). Part of that humor is the mocking of female desire, which shows how male and female desires are similar (170). In his second chapter in Don Juan, Dennis argues that Byron uses irony to explain how that awareness of the desire in oneself and others is a form of freedom (207). In the conclusion, Dennis suggests that Byron recognized that knowledge of desire was a freeing force and can affect every aspect of life (234).

Dennis’s theoretical explanations of desire and its origins is necessary to understanding its role in Byron’s work, but the book is often weighed down by those same theories. For example, his interchanging of the idea of metaphysical desire and mimetic desire is sometimes muddied, making it difficult to understand the overall theme about desire. Despite those shortcomings, the discussion of identity and how Byron shaped identities is the most salient in the book. As Byron is so closely associated with the “hero” that he created, an examination of how the poet’s constructed identities remain relevant. The idea that desire connects Byron’s works makes this argument seem even stronger. Dennis’s book could enlighten research on individualism and emotional elements of the Romantic poet’s work.

Selected editions of Byron’s work

Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, seven volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press/New York: Oxford University Press, 1980-1993.

Byron's Letters & Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 13 volumes. London: John Murray, 1973-1994.

The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew Nicholson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

For more information on Byron’s original works, including publication dates and publisher information, go to the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Biographies

Eisler, Benita. Byron: Child of Passion, Food of Fame. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Print.

John Galt, The Life of Lord Byron. London: Colburn & Bentley, 1830.

Marchand, Leslie A. Byron: A Biography, 3 volumes released in 1957, combined into one volume, Byron: A Portrait, in 1970.

Byron journal

The Byron Journal, published by The Byron Society (http://www.thebyronsociety.com), is available through Project Muse at TWU’s library site. The titles of articles in the most recent issue, 42:1 (2014), are:

• “ ‘Our Mixed Essence’: Manfred’s Ecological Turn” by J. Andrew Hubbell
• “Mischievous Effects: Byron and Illegitimate Publication” By Jason Kolkey
• “P. L. Møller: Kierkegaard’s Byronic Adversary” By Troy Wellington Smith
• “‘A Strange Summer Interlude’: Notes on a Lost Plaque” By Howard Davies
• “Three New Letters to Byron” by Peter Cochran

Selected scholarly books on Byron

Bond, Geoffrey. Lord Byron’s Best Friends, from Bulldogs to Boatswain & Beyond. By Geoffrey Bond. [n.p. UK] Nick McCann Associates Ltd, 2013.

The Cambridge Companion to Byron. Ed. Drummon Bone. Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 2004.

Cochran, Peter. Aspects of Byron's Don Juan. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2013.

---. Byron and Bob: Lord Byron's Relationship with Robert Southey. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2010.

---. Byron and Hobby-O: Lord Byron's Relationship with John Cam Hobhouse. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2010.

Goode, Clement Tyson. George Gordon, Lord Byron: A Comprehensive, Annotated Research Bibliography of Secondary Materials in English, 1973-1994. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 1997.

Hopps, Gavin. Byron’s Ghosts: The Spectral, the Spiritual and the Supernatural. Ed. Hopps. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013.

Howe, Anthony. Byron and the Forms of Thought. Liverpool, England: Liverpool UP, 2013.

Marchand, Leslie A. Marchand. Byron’s Poetry: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U Press, 1968.

McGann, Jerome. Byron and Romanticism. Ed. James Soderholm. Cambridge, Cambridge U Press, 2002.

Pomarè, Carla. Byron and the Discourses of History. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2013.

Stabler, Jane. Byron. Ed. Stabler. London and New York: Longman, 1998. Print.

Selected scholarly articles from the past five years

Bari, Shahidha. "Listening for Leila: The Re-Direction of Desire in Byron's The Giaour." European Romantic Review 24.6 (2013): 699-721. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Bernhard Jackson, Emily A. “Swimmers, Trimmers, and Jacks of all Trades: Byron's Paradoxical Struggle for Poetic Dominance.” European Romantic Review 22.6 (2011): 833-45. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Bertonèche, Caroline. “Lord Byron's Eccentricities.” In and Out: Eccentricity in Britain. Eds. Sophie Aymes-Stokes and Laurent Mellet. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2012. 265-275. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Beyers, Chris. “Byron.” Edgar Allen Poe in Context. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2013. 251-259. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Borushko, Matthew C. “History, Historicism, and Agency at Byron's Ismail.” ELH 81.1 (2014): 269-97. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Britton, Jeanne M. “Written on the Brow: Character, Narrative, and the Face in Byron and Austen.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 34.5 (2012): 517-31. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Callaghan, Madeleine. “The Poetics of Perception in Southey's the Curse of Kehama and Byron's The Giaour.” Wordsworth Circle 42.1 (2011): 38-41. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Camilleri, Anna. “Byron's Arabesque.” Charles Lamb Bulletin 155 (2012): 73-83. Web.

Chatsiou, Ourania. “Lord Byron: Paratext and Poetics.” Modern Language Review 109.3 (2014): 640. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Chien, Jui-Pi. “Matthew Arnold's Reception of Hippolyte Taine: Lord Byron as ‘Touchstone.’” NTU Studies in Language and Literature 27 (2012): 25-46. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Cochran, Peter. “The Phantom Byron Book Sale Catalogue.” Byron Journal 41.1 (2013): 49-55. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Cohen-Vrignaud, Gerard. “Byron and Oriental Love.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 68.1 (2013): 1-32. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Crisafulli, Lilla Maria. “Poetry as Thought and Action: Mazzini's Reflections on Byron.” History of European Ideas 38.3 (2012): 387-98. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. “‘Rappaccini's Daughter’ and a Lyric by Byron.” Notes and Queries 61 (259).1 (2014): 71-3. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Elfenbein, Andrew. “How to Analyze a Correspondence: The Example of Byron and Murray.” European Romantic Review 22.3 (2011): 347-55. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Ennis, Daniel J. “Byron in Ravenna: Laureate of Reform.” European Romantic Review 22.5 (2011): 601-23. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Falloon, Anne. “Byron's Week in Middleton.” Byron Journal 41.1 (2013): 15-25. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Fleming, Anne. “Byron and Montaigne.” Byron Journal 37.1 (2009): 33-42. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Franson, Craig. “‘Those Suspended Pangs’: Romantic Reviewers and the Agony of Byron's Mazeppa.” European Romantic Review 23.6 (2012): 727-43. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Frye, Lowell T. “Carlyle and Byron: Anxiety, Influence and the Choice of Inheritance.” Carlyle Studies Annual 27 (2011): 231-9. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Giles, Paul. “Romanticism's Antipodean Spectres: Don Juan and the Transgression of Space and Time.” European Romantic Review 25.3 (2014): 365-83. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Hegele, Arden. “Lord Byron, Literary Detective: The Recovery of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Long-Lost Venetian Letters.” Byron Journal 39.1 (2011): 35-44. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Hurst, Mary. “Byron's Catholic Confessions.” Byron Journal 40.1 (2012): 29-40. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Lansdown, Richard, and W. A. Speck. “Byron and Disraeli: The Mediterranean Tours.” Wordsworth Circle 43.2 (2012): 106-13. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Llewellyn, Tanya. “ ‘The Fiery Imagination’: Charlotte Brontë, the Arabian Nights and Byron's Turkish Tales.” Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society 37.3 (2012): 216-26. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Luijk, Ruben van. “Sex, Science, and Liberty: The Resurrection of Satan in Nineteenth-Century (Counter) Culture.” The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity. Eds. Per Faxneld and Jesper Aagaard Petersen. Oxford, England: Oxford UP, 2013. 41-52. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Minta, Stephen. “Letters to Lord Byron.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 45 (2007). Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Mozer, Hadley J. “‘Ozymandias,’ Or De Casibus Lord Byron: Literary Celebrity on the Rocks.” European Romantic Review 21.6 (2010): 727-49. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

O'Connell, Mary. “‘[T]He Natural Antipathy of Author & Bookseller’: Byron and John Murray.” Byron Journal 41.2 (2013): 159-72. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

O'Neill, Michael. “‘Without a Sigh He Left’: Byron's Poetry of Departure in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I and II.” Byron Journal 41.2 (2013): 115-25. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Peterfreund, Stuart. “Taste, Byron's Cookbook, and the Secret Ingredients in the English Cantos of Don Juan.” European Romantic Review 23.6 (2012): 745-64. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Pielak, Chase. “Shady Beasts: Animal Transgression and Identity in Byron, Woody Allen, and Eminem.” Popular Culture Review 25.1 (2013): 83-96. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Rawes, Alan. “Byron's Romantic Calvinism.” Byron Journal 40.2 (2012): 129-41. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Shears, Jonathon. “‘D----d Corkscrew Staircases’: Byron’s Hangovers.” Byron Journal 40.1 (2012): 1-15. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Shinabargar, Scott. “Unexorcised Conscience: The Byronic Complex of Maldoror.” Intertexts 17.1-2 (2013): 113-28. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Simpson, Michael. “On Byron's Famous Fanes: Ruined Temples and Reformed Theatres.” Byron Journal 41.2 (2013): 145-57. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Slykhuis, Matt. “Beautifully Damned: Imagination, Revelation, and Exile in Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and Byron’s Cain: A Mystery.” Religion in the Age of Enlightenment 3 (2012): 189-228. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Stansbury, Heather. “Bound by Blood: Incestuous Desire in the Works of Byron.” Byron Journal 40.1 (2012): 17-28. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Stauffer, Andrew. “Poetry, Romanticism, and the Practice of Nineteenth-Century Books.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 34.5 (2012): 411-26. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Taylor, Anya. “Catherine the Great: Coleridge, Byron, and Erotic Politics on the Eastern Front.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 61 (2012). Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Taylor, David Francis. “Byron, Sheridan, and the Afterlife of Eloquence.” Review of English Studies 65.270 (2014): 474-94. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Webb, Timothy. “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Annotating the Second Canto.” Byron Journal 41.2 (2013): 127-43. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

White, Adam. “Identity in Place: Lord Byron, John Clare and Lyric Poetry.” Byron Journal 40.2 (2012): 115-27. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Internet resources

• International Association of Byron Societies: The site offers a timeline and biographical information, as well as an extensive listing of Byron’s works.  It hosts conferences and offers some recommended readings. The website is http://www.internationalbyronsociety.org.
• Poetry Foundation page: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lord-byron
• BBC page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/byron_lord.shtml
• Biography.com page: http://www.biography.com/people/lord-byron-21124525
• Biography Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usuxB9lOGUA
• Reading of “She Walks in Beauty” with text: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_zCOJOgd4U

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

Kristina Barnes
Dr. Bender
Eng 5243
October 30, 2014
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

Biography
Charlotte Brontë was born on April 21, 1816 to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. She was the third of six children; Maria, Elizabeth, Branwell, Emily and Anne. Charlotte had a childhood filled with loss. Her mother passed away when she was five and her aunt came to help her father raise their six children. Charlotte and her sisters, Maria, Elizabeth and Emily were sent to the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. While they were there because of the harsh regimen, poor food and typhoid fever Maria was brought home and passed away a few months later. After Elizabeth was sent home ill their father, Patrick, brought home Charlotte and Emily. Soon after their return Elizabeth passed away. Charlotte’s experiences and the bitterness she felt towards the school are reflected in her portrayal of Lowood School in Jane Eyre. From an early age Charlotte knew she was not going to have financial independence like her aunt so she must earn her own living. She lacked the self-esteem and was sensitive to her lack of physical charm gave her little faith in marriage and

Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850
Source: National Portrait Gallery, London

realized she needed to pursue her talents. She would take every educational opportunity that she had and self-improvement was important to her. She wanted to refine her knowledge in art and later become an artist then a poet. She had to later abandon these dreams to become a governess. After her experience at Clergy Daughters School she was educated at home for the next five years from her Aunt Branwell who taught Charlotte and her sister’s letters, needlework and French while Patrick Brontë taught his son Branwell and later his daughters the classics. In January 1831 Charlotte went to Margaret Wooler’s school at Roe Head. After eighteen months Charlotte returned home to share her knowledge with her sisters. Together over the next three years they read, studied, taught, and wrote letters to their school friends but above all she continued to write and create imaginary realms with her sisters. In July 1835 Charlotte Brontë returned to Roe Head as a teacher so her sisters could receive a free education. Charlotte remained employed for three years. Still wanting to be known for her poetry she sent some of her work to Robert Southey asking for his advice. He expressed the conventional ideas about women writers which didn’t discourage Brontë; he only recommended she not forget her real duties as a woman. In 1839 she began one of what would be many positions as a governess. It is thought that many of these events were the inspiration to characters in Jane Eyre. 
In May 1846 Charlotte, Emily and Anne financed the publication of a collection of poems under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The pseudonyms were to hide their gender but keeping with their initials. In August 1847 Jane Eyre was published and it had initial success and favorable reviews. After Brontë began to work on her next novel Shirley her family suffered three more deaths; Branwell, Emily, and Anne. After Anne’s death Charlotte began writing as a way to cope with the grief of losing her siblings. The final noel published in Brontë’s lifetime was Villette. Like Jane Eyre Brontë uses experiences from her own life to create fictional events. 
In January 1854 Charlotte finally accepted a marriage proposal from Arthur Bell Nicholls and they were married that June. Soon after Charlotte became pregnant but her health declined rapidly and she died with her unborn child on March 31, 1855 at age 38. After her death The Professor her first novel she had written was published and a fragment of a new novel she had been writing has been completed by two different authors. 
The decades after her death Charlotte Brontë’s writing was becoming to be seen as inferior because critics claimed it was just a retelling of her life. More recently Charlotte Brontë’s writing has been seen as inspirational and as a criticism against political, religious and social standards of her time. 

Scholarship
Alexander, Christine. “Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington’.” Bronte
           Studies 35.3 (2010): 208-14. Academic Search Compete. Web. 15 Oct.2014.
Armitt, Lucie. “Haunted Childhood in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Yearbook of English Studies
 (2002): 217. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.
Brown, Kate E. “Beloved Objects: Mourning, Materiality, and Charlotte Brontë’s “Never-Ending
 Story.”’ ELH 65.2 (1998): 395-421. JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Braun, Gretchen. ""A Great Break in the Common Course of Confession": Narrating Loss in 
Charlotte Brontë's Villette." ELH 78.1 (2011): 189-212. Project MUSE. Web. 28 Oct. 2014. 
Burstein, Miriam E. “When did Charlotte Brontë Read Vanity Fair?.” Bronte Studies 37.2
 (2012): 159-162. Academic Search Complete.  Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Capuano, Peter J. "Networked Manufacture in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley." Victorian 
Studies 55.2 (2013): 231-242. Project MUSE. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
Clarke, Micael M. "Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Mid-Victorian Anti-Catholicism, and the Turn to
 Secularism." ELH 78.4 (2011): 967-989.Project MUSE. Web. 28 Oct. 2014. 
Cohn, Elisha. "Still life: suspended animation in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette." Studies in English 
Literature, 1500-1900 52.4 (2012): 843. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Connor, Sharon.“Loneness’ in the Letters of Charlotte Brontë.” Bronte Studies 33.2 (2008):
91-96. Academic Search Complete. Web. 29. Oct. 2014.
Dalsimer, Katherine. "The Young Charlotte Brontë." The Journal of the History of Childhood
 and Youth 3.3 (2010): 317-339. Project MUSE. Web. 28 Oct. 2014. 
Fenton-Hathaway, Anna. “Charlotte Brontë, Marcy Taylor, and the ‘Redundant Women’ Debate.
 Bronte Studies 35.2 (2010): 137-148. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Gao, Haiyan. “ Reflection on Feminism in Jane Eyre.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies
 3.6 (2013): 926-931. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Hadjiafxendi, Kyriaki. "Women Reviewing Women in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Critical
 Reception of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot ." Victorian Studies 54.2 
(2012): 328-330. Project MUSE. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.
Herischian, Nazila. “Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargaso Sea as a Hypertext of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane
 Eyre: A Postmodern Perspective.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics & 
English Literature 1.6 (2012): 72-82. 
Inglis, Katherine. “Ophthalmoscopy In Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Journal of Victorian Culture
 (Routledge) 15.3 (2010): 348-369. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Jackson, Rachel. “Empty Letters and the Ghost of Desire in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Bronte 
Studies 35.2 (2010): 95-106. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Jung, Sandro. “Curiosity, Surveillance and Detection in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Bronte
 Studies 35.2 (2010): 160-171. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Kent, Julia D. “Making the Prude in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Partial Answers (British
 Women Writers) 8.2 (2010): 325-39. Literature Online. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Jung, Sandro. “Curiosity, Surveillance and Detection in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Bronte
 Studies 35.2 (2010): 160-171. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

Lydon, Susan. “The Gendering of Art and Science in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Bronte Studies
 34.1 (2009): 20-30. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Marin, Ileana. “Charlotte Brontë’s Heron Scissors: Cancellations and Excisions in the 
Manuscript of Shirley.” Bronte Studies 38.1 (2013): 19-29. Academic Search Complete. 
Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Miller, Kathleen Ann. "Haunted Heroines: The Gothic Imagination and the Female 
Bildungsroman of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and L. M. Montgomery." The 
Lion and the Unicorn 34.2 (2010): 125-147.Project MUSE. Web. 29 Oct. 2014. 
Miller, Lucasta. “Sex and the Woman Writer: Charlotte Brontë and the Cautionary Tale of 
Letitia Elizabeth Landon.” Bronte Studies 36.1 (2011): 38-43. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Mullen, Richard. “Charlotte Brontë And William Thackeray.” Bronte Studies 36.1 (2011)
 Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 Oct 2014.
Owsley, Lauren. “Charlotte Brontë’s circumvention of Patriarchy: Gender, Labour and Financial
 Agency in Jane Eyre.” Bronte Studies 38.1 (2013): Academic Search Complete. Web. 15
 Oct. 2014.
Parsons, Diana. “Charlotte Brontë and Henrietta Asseretti: Neighbouring Governesses?.” Bronte 
Studies 34.1 (2009): 67-75. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Pearson, Sara L. “Charlotte Brontë’s Poetics: A Study of ‘Pilate’s Wife’s Dream’*.” Bronte 
Studies 37.3 (2012): 194-207. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Pearson, Sara L. “The Coming Man’: Revelations of Male Character in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane 
Eyre.” Bronte Studies 37.4 (2012): 299-305. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct.
 2014.
Peterson, Linda H. “Triangulation, Desire, and Discontent in The Life of Charlotte Bronte.” 
Studies in English Literature 47.4 (2007): 901-20. Project Muse. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Rea, Joanne E. “Brontë’s Jane Eyre. “Explicator 50.2 (1992): 75. Academic Search Complete.
 Web. 15 Oct. 2014. 
Reger, Mark. “Brontë’s Jane Eyre.” Explicator 50.4 (1992): 213. Academic Search Complete. 
Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
Roberts, Michele. "How Eating Becomes a Metaphor in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë. (Food)."
New Statesman [1996] 5 May 2003: 56. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.
Sadiq, ebtisam. “Negation, Selection and Substitution: Charlotte Brontë’s Feminist Poetics.”
 English Studies 93.7 (2012): 833-857. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Jung, Sandro. “Curiosity, Surveillance and Detection in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.” Bronte
 Studies 35.2 (2010): 160-171. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Stone, Laurie. “Why Charlotte Dissed Emily.” Literary Review 49.3 (2006): 63-70. Academic
 Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Sutherland, Kathryn. “Jane Eyre’s Literary History: The Case for Mansfield Park.” ELH  59.2 
(1992): 409-440. JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Tomaiuolo, Saverio. “From ‘Emma’ to Emma Brown: Charlotte Brontë’s Legacies.” Bronte
 Studies 38.3 (2013): 195-205. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Twinn, Frances. “The Portrait of Haworth in the Life of Charlotte Brontë.” Bronte Studies 30.2 
(2005): 151-161. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Voskuil, Lynn M. "Acting naturally: Brontë, Lewes and the Problem of Gender Performance." 
ELH 62.2 (1995): 409. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Ward, Ian. “In Search of Healing Voices: Church and State in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley.” 
Journal of Church & State 54.4. (2012): 603-624. Religion and Philosophy Collection.
 Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Weisser, Susan Ostrov. “Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and the Meaning of Love.” Bronte 
Studies 31.2 (2006): 93-100. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

Wong,  Daniel. “Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and the Possibilities of a Post secular Cosmopolitan
Critique.” Journal of Victorian Culture (Routledge)  18.1 (2013): 1-6. Academic Search 
Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

Selected letter of Charlotte Bronte
Smith, Margaret, ed. Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë. Oxford, GBR: Oxford University 
Press, UK, 2007. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 28 October 2014.

Web Resources
http://www.bronte.org.uk/
http://www.brontefamily.org/
http://hollis.harvard.edu/
These two web resources about teeny tiny adventure books written by Charlotte Bronte and her brother. There are links so you can read each book digitally. 
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-the-teeny-tiny-bronte-books-20140702-story.html
http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/13-year-old-charlotte-bronte-her-brother-wrote-teeny-tiny-adventure-books-measuring-1-x-2-inches.html
Book Review
In Charlotte Brontë, a psychological Study author Rosmand Langbride examines Charlotte Brontë’s life from a psychological stand point. He looks at her life from childhood, when she was a governess, her Brussels period and her marriage. Langbride argues that every agony in the Brontë family can be tracked back to her father. Langbride uses Charlotte’s letter and accounts from her novels to illustrate how mentally her father damaged both her and her siblings. 
In the first chapter Langbride describes the sad childhood of Charlotte Brontë and her siblings. Her father wouldn’t allow them to play like normal children and Langbride argues that their father’s view of children was an unfavorable one and that religion also kept his beliefs stern which was passed down to his children. Since their father wanted complete silence in the home the children didn’t have a typical upbringing. They would read the newspaper and discuss politics at a young age; Langbride argues that this would hinder the children in their lives later and that they were not developing the mental part of themselves that many children do during this time of their lives. It is an interesting insight to the Brontë family. Because Charlotte didn’t know how to play as a child when she later became a governess she didn’t understand the children she would be in charge of watching. Their tendencies were unfamiliar to her and she would see them as unruly. 
Langbride also argues that the time spent at Clergy Daughter School would under develop the girls physically. Charlotte eventually loses her oldest sisters because of the conditions at the school. Because of the way they were raised to suffer in silence the Brontë children never requested medical aid when they were sick until it was too late. So one by one Charlotte lost every single one of her siblings and she too would die at a young age. 
Another psychological impact on Charlotte from her father was the idea of a perfect man or husband. Since from birth the family regarded Branwell as a genius him and his father were the ideal in Charlottes eyes. This idea kept her from marrying someone while she was younger and eventually she married to a man like her father at the age of 38 and when she tried to have a child with her husband at this age she became since and died. 
Langbride provides a good argument for the Brontë family and their father being able to prevent all the heartache of their short lives. There were many habits formed by the family that could have prevented much of the heartache the family felt. 


Work Cited
Langbridge, Rosamond, 1880-. Charlotte Brontë: a Psychological Study. Garden City, N.Y.: 
Doubleday, Doran & company, 1929.
Alexander, Christine. “Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press Online. 2014. 28 Oct. 2014.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Marsha Decker

Dr. Bender

English 5243

30 October 2014

Mary Wollstonecraft

Biography

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century philosopher, writer, and proto-feminist. She was concerned with individual rights and the social consequences of sexual inequality. The second of seven children, Wollstonecraft was born in London on April 27, 1759, to Edward and Elizabeth Wollstonecraft. Her grandfather was a successful weaver who left a small legacy. However, her father was an abusive man who spent his share of the legacy dragging his family around England and Wales as he tried, unsuccessfully, to be a gentleman farmer. According to Mary, her father was a drunken bully who often abused his wife and children.  Her mother’s submissive acceptance of her husband’s brutal treatment influenced Mary’s opinion that marriage was a form of female bondage.

In 1778, Wollstonecraft became the companion to Mrs. Dawson and lived in Bath. She returned home upon her mother’s illness in 1781. After the death of her mother, Wollstonecraft lived for a brief time with the family of her close friend, Fanny Blood. In 1783, she left the Blood family to take care of her sister, Eliza, and her newborn daughter. Eliza’s marriage was an unhappy one and by January of 1784, Wollstonecraft convinced Eliza to leave her husband and go into hiding. Her daughter was left behind and died a short time later.

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie, c. 1797
Source: National Portrait Gallery, London

In 1784, Wollstonecraft, her sisters Eliza and Everina, and their friend Fanny Blood, established a school in Newlington Green. It was in Newlington Green where Mary met Reverend Richard Price, who became a mentor, and Joseph Johnson, her future publisher and friend. In 1785, Mary travelled to Portugal to visit her friend Fanny who had left the school and married and was now expecting her first child. Mary did not enjoy Portuguese society and her unhappiness was deepened when Fanny and her baby did not survive childbirth.

By the time Wollstonecraft arrived back home, she found her school in financial difficulties. An advance from her publisher, Joseph Johnson, on her first book Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on Female Conduct, in the more important Duties of Life (1787), saved her from destruction. However, the school ultimately collapsed and Wollstonecraft turned to employment as a governess for Lord Kingsborough’s family. This short employment led to a trip to Ireland where Wollstonecraft would complete her first novel, Mary, a Fiction.

After Wollstonecraft’s return from Ireland, Joseph Johnson offered her a position as a translator and advisor for the Analytical Review.  In 1788, she completed Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations, calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness and in 1789, The Female Reader: Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse; Selected from the Best Writers, and Disposed under Proper Heads; for the Improvement of Young Women which was published under the pen name of Mr. Cresswick, a teacher of Elocution.

In December, 1789, Wollstonecraft reviewed a speech by Dr. Price on English patriotism. Edmund Burke attacked Dr. Price’s speech in his 1790, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. Encouraged by Mr. Johnson, Wollstonecraft came to his defense in her 1790 publication of the Vindication of the Rights of Men. The first edition was published anonymously, but the second was published under her own name and established her as a political writer. She followed this work with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. In the book Wollstonecraft attacked the educational restrictions that kept women in a state of childlike ignorance with slavish devotion to male admiration.  She was especially critical of a society that encouraged women to be passive and overly concerned with their looks. She stated that women acted foolish and vain because society taught them to be. Wollstonecraft argued for a society where women could be educated in the same manner as men with a focus on the development of reason. Wollstonecraft argued this would make them better companions, wives and mothers. She also argued that the moral corruption of society was due to the acquisition of property and its ostentation display of it instead of the pursuit of reason and the protection of natural rights for both sexes.

In December 1792, Wollstonecraft traveled to France where she met Gilbert Imlay, an American merchant and author. She fell in love with him and posed as his wife in order to avoid the persecution of British subjects during the Terror.  Although Imlay and Wollstonecraft never married, they had a daughter, Fanny, in 1794. Her relationship with Imlay was often turbulent; at several times during their relationship, she caught him cheating on her. These encounters would lead to bouts of depression and attempted suicide. By 1796, the relationship was over and she returned to London.  

In 1796, Wollstonecraft renewed an earlier friendship with William Godwin. They became close friends and then lovers. When she found herself pregnant for the second time, she worried about public censure as an unwed woman and the lovers married. During their brief time together as husband and wife, Wollstonecraft worked on her last book, The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria. Wollstonecraft died on September 10, 1797 after giving birth to her daughter, Mary, who would grow up to be Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

At the time of her death, Wollstonecraft was often vilified by society for what it saw as her scandalous personal life. Her reputation was further damaged after Godwin, out of love for his wife, published an account of her life in Memoirs of the Author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ (1798). The Memoirs reveals her turbulent history with Imlay, her multiple suicide attempts, and her illegitimate child. As a result, her reputation was destroyed and often used as a reason to dismiss her ideas. However, authors such as Virginia Woolf and suffragettes such as Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were all inspired by her work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Book Review

Lyndall Gordon’s Vindication opens with a description of Mary Wollstonecraft’s arrival in France in December 1972. She recalls Wollstonecraft’s impression of the eerily silent city during the Revolution and before the beginning of The Terror. Wollstonecraft records the stillness of the streets, the abandoned stores, the drums of the National Guard, and the dignity of Louis XVI on the way to his execution.

Gordon’s book is the story of a remarkable woman who is intelligent, outspoken, passionate, egotistical, compassionate, resilient, and fiercely independent. She is a woman who wished “to see women neither heroines or brutes, but reasonable creatures”(2). Gordon presents a study of Wollstonecraft that moves beyond the traditional recounting of her personal life. Gordon seeks to present Wollstonecraft as a woman who tried out a variety of roles: the uneducated school teacher; unrequited lover; discarded mistress; the scribe; the fallen woman; the traveler; the pregnant wife, each time reinventing the roles in her quest for genius.

Gordon argues Wollstonecraft’s cause started with her childhood where she was raised by an alcoholic abusive father and an emotionally distance mother. The first part of the book describes Mary’s home life and how, as a victim of domestic violence and maternal neglect, she strove to prove herself, both to her parents and to society.  The reader finds out that through the generous help of benevolent adults such as John Arden and the Reverend, Mr. Clare, Mary was able to acquire a modest education. Gordon also describes how Mr. Clare introduced Wollstonecraft to Francis Blood who would become a close friend of Wollstonecraft and the person responsible for showing her the power of writing. Gordon argues the result of these friendships was the creation of a searching intelligence in Mary. 

Gordon’s book continues the journey of Mary Wollstonecraft through the rough periods of her life and gives the reader a glimpse of the struggles facing a single woman in the patriarchal world of eighteenth-century England. Gordon confronts and discusses the speculations surrounding Wollstonecraft’s affairs with Fuseli and Imlay as well as the influence of her involvement as an observer of the French Revolution and as a contributor to the heady philosophical arguments of her day. The result is a story of the adventurous, and often times tragic, life of a woman who is determined to rise above her situation and with intelligence, determination, and unique insight, bravely forge a groundbreaking path towards female equality and independence.

Additional Book Resources

Brody, Miriam. Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Women’s Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

Gordon, Charlotte. Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley. New York: Random House, 2015. Print.

Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000. Print.

Wardle, Ralph, M. Godwin and Mary: Letters of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977

Primary Sources

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Man. New York: Prometheus Book, 1996. Print.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. New York: Dover Thrift Editions, 1996. Print.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Oxford World Classics). Eds. Tonne Brekke and Jon Mee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman. Ed. Carol H. Poston.  New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1975. Print.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, and Gilbert Imlay. The Love Letters from Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay. Charleston: Nabu Press, 2010. Print.

 Secondary Sources 2004-2014

Coffee, Alan M. S. J. "Freedom as Independence: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Grand Blessing of Life." Hypatia 29.4 (2014): 908-924. SocINDEX . Web. 28 Oct. 2014

Field, Corinne. “ ‘Made Woman of When they are Mere Children’: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Critique of Eighteenth-Century Girlhood.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4.2 (2011):198-221. Project Muse. Web. 26 October 2014.

                         

Friedman, Dustin. “Parents of the Mind: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Aesthetics of Productive Masculinity.” Studies in Romanticism 48.3 (2009):423-447. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 October 2014.

Freitas Boe, Ana de. "'I Call Beauty A Social Quality': Mary Wollstonecraft And Hannah More's Rejoinder To Edmund Burke's Body Politic Of The Beautiful." Women's Writing 18.3 (2011): 348-366. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Garner, Naomi Jayne. "'Seeing Through a Glass Darkly': Wollstonecraft and the Confinements of Eighteenth-Century Femininity." Journal Of International Women's Studies 11.3 (2009): 81-95. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 28 Oct. 2014

O'Neill, Daniel I. "John Adams Versus Mary Wollstonecraft on the French Revolution and Democracy." Journal of The History of Ideas 3 (2007): 451. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.

Packham, Catherine. "Domesticity, Objects and Idleness: Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy." Women's Writing 19.4 (2012): 544-562. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Palumbo, David M. "Mary Wollstonecraft, Jonathan Swift and the Passion in Reading." Studies In English Literature, 1500-1900 3 (2011): 625. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.

Reuter, Martina. “ ‘ Like a Fanciful Kind of Half-being’: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Criticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.” Hypatia 29.4 (2014):925-941. Humanities. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.

Rzepka, Charles J. "Julie Carlson. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley." Wordsworth Circle 4 (2008): 152. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Sessler, Randall. "Recasting the Revolution: The Media Debate Between Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Paine." European Romantic Review 25.5 (2014): 611-626. Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Seval, Hale. "The Woman From The North Wind: Travel Letters by Mary Wollstonecraft/ Kuzey Ruzgarinin Kadini: Mary Wollstonecraft' In Gezi Mektuplari." Kadin/Woman 2000 2 (2011): 75. General OneFile. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.

Tegan, Mary Beth. "Mocking the Mothers of the Novel: Mary Wollstonecraft, Maternal Metaphor, and the Reproduction of Sympathy." Studies in the Novel 4 (2011): 357. Project MUSE. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Volkova, Inna. “ ‘I Have Looked Steadily Around Me’: The Power of Examples in Mary Wollstonecraft’S A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman.” Women's Studies 43.7 (2014): 892-910. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

Waters, Mary A. "'The First of a New Genus': Mary Wollstonecraft as a Literary Critic and Mentor to Mary Hays." Eighteenth-Century Studies 37.3 (2004): 415-434. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.

Wilcox, Kirstin R. "Vindicating Paradoxes: Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Woman'." Studies in Romanticism 3 (2009): 447. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Oct. 2014

Online Resources

BBC Online is a UK based, international public service broadcaster. Their online presence, BBC Online, offers a comprehensive schedule of news, programs, articles, timelines, and archives on British History.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a scholarly reference resource that includes entries on philosophy and related disciplines with the goal to create an update reference source. All entries are maintained and updated by an expert or group of experts in the field. Each update is reviewed by a member of the editing board to insure quality and maintain academic standards.

            The Victorian Web is an academic and scholarly site that encourages multiple points of view and debate. It presents its images and text, including complete books and paintings, as part of a network of linked information.

Works Cited for Bibliography Section

“Mary Wollstonecraft”. Bio. A&E Television Networks. 2014. Web. 25 October 2014.

“Mary Wollstonecraft”. Ed. Stuart Corran.  English. University of Penn. N.d. Web. 25 October 2014.

Taylor, Barbara. “Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2014. Web. 28 October 2014.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Biography

Dulce de Castro
Professor Ashley Bender
English 5243
30 October 2014

Percy Shelley’s Biography

   The following brief biography is based on Shelley’s biography from Poetry Foundation at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/percy-bysshe-shelley.

     Percy Shelley was born in Sussex, England, on August 4, 1792. His parents were Timothy and

Percy Shelley by Amelia Curran
Source: National Portrait Gallery, London

Elizabeth Shelley, and he had one brother and four sisters.
     In 1802 Shelle entered Syon House Academy, and in 1804 he entered Eaton College, where he started writing poetry. However, his first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi. In 1810 Shelley entered University College, Oxford, where he stayed for less than a year. While at Oxford, he published Gothic fiction and poetry and the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, which caused his expulsion from Oxford and strained his relationship with his father.
     In August 1811 he married Harriet Westbrook and moved to Keswick, where he met Robert Southey. Later on, in 1812 he met William Godwin. At this time Shelley was working on Queen Mab, a political epic that was published in 1813. In 1814 Shelley and Mary (the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft and author of Frankenstein), accompanied by Jane Clairmont (Mary’s half sister), eloped to Paris and then to Switzerland but returned to London a few weeks later.
     In 1816 Shelley published Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude: and Other Poems, Shelley’s first Romantic poems.  This same year Shelley met Byron in Switzerland. After returning from Switzerland, Shelley wrote two of his best poems: “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and “Mont Blanc.”
     After the suicide of Harriet, Shelley’s wife, he married Mary in 1816. They moved to Marlow in 1817, where Shelley met John Keats and Horace Smith and wrote the political pamphlets, A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote Throughout the Kingdom and An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, and the political epic The Revolt of Islam.
In 1818 Shelley and Mary traveled to Italy, where Shelley wrote the poems “Lines Written among the Euganean Hills” and “Julian and Maddalo.” Many of the poems that Shelley wrote during this period deal with his estranged relationship with Mary. During this period he also wrote the drama Prometheus Unbound, which was published in 1820 and is considered his masterpiece. Some of Shelley’s best lyric poems (“Ode to the West Wind,” “The Cloud,” “To a Skylark,” and “Ode to Liberty”) were published together with Prometheus Unbound in 1820. During this period he also started writing his drama The Cenci. In 1821 Shelley published A Defence of Poetry and “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats.”
In 1822, shortly before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sailing accident in Italy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Book Review

Dulce de Castro
Professor Ashley Bender
English 5243
30 October 2014

Book Review

Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime. By Cian Duffy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. xiv, 260 pp.
     Shelley’s notion of the sublime has been traditionally examined as moving away “from a radical empiricism to an increasingly apolitical idealism” (6) and moving toward Kant’s transcendental-idealist paradigms. In Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, Cian Duffy provides a revision of the historical and theoretical contexts in which Shelley’s idea of the sublime has been explored and argues that the poet’s conception of the sublime should be examined in light of his understanding of and engagement with British and French discourse on sublimity rather than in terms of Kant’s theory of the sublime. The main thesis of the book is that “Shelley’s concept of an epistemologically and politically progressive imagination—the concept that informs the Defense of Poetry—was worked out during a career driven by his critique of sublimity” (188-189). Duffy contends that in his “lifelong engagement with the discourse on the natural sublime” (189), Shelley posits a conception of the natural sublime that is “politically radical and epistemologically sceptical” (190). He argues that Shelley challenges the British discourse that the natural sublime reflects God’s existence and divine power and considers this belief superstitious. Thus, unlike British theorists, Duffy’s Shelley explores the sublime according to “secular libertarian” (7) beliefs.
     Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime consists of an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion.  In the first chapter, Duffy provides a close reading of Queen Mab and argues that in this poem Shelley rejects the views of theorists such as Archibald Alison and Thomas Reid who consider that natural grandeur—the natural sublime—proves God’s existence. Shelley criticizes and rejects such theistic views of the sublime as superstitious and prompted by irrational fear. Instead, he argues that the world is governed by Necessity and that God is created by the imagination. Shelley proposes a new imagination, which he calls cultivated imagination. This is a secularized imagination.
     In Chapter 2 Duffy examines Alastor and the unfinished story The Assassins, in which Christ is followed by the Assassins, an Ismaili sect. Duffy argues that Shelley views the conflict depicted in The Assassins as part of the natural sublime and as a reflection of the tension between quietism and revolution. Duffy contends that in Alastor, Shelley shows that isolation and solipsism are dangerous.
     Chapter 3 focuses on the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Mont Blanc. Duffy argues that in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Shelley portrays Hume and Mary Wollstonecraft as examples of people who possess a cultivated imagination—a beautiful intellect. In Mont Blanc, as Duffy argues, Shelley elaborates on his conception of the cultivated imagination as a rejection of superstitious imagination but as a way of seeing the connection between natural laws and political laws. Duffy also suggests that Mont Blanc should be interpreted as following “the revolutionary tradition of Rousseau, Wordsworth and Byron” (110).
     In Chapter 4 Duffy discusses Laon and Cynthia and emphasizes his argument that Shelley interprets political change in terms of natural laws, which can only be understood by means of the cultivated imagination.
     Chapter 5 provides a close reading of Prometheus Unbound. In this chapter Duffy underscores his argument that political changes should be interpreted in terms of the natural sublime, of natural phenomena. Duffy argues that Shelley sees the natural sublime as “a figure for ideological rather than violent revolution” (174).
     Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime provides an interesting and novel perspective on Shelley’s conception of the natural sublime by proposing that the poet’s discourse of the sublime is not based on Kant’s theory of the sublime but rather on a secularized view of the sublime that interprets political turmoil and changes as a function of natural events. Duffy supports his argument with thorough close readings of several of Shelley’s major and minor works. However, due to Duffy’s emphasis on presenting Shelley’s ideas on the sublimity as unfailingly consistent, his readings of the poet’s works may seem repetitive.