Posthumous Poems 1824

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New York, 1991 - Poetry - 415 pages
After Shelley's death in the Gulf of Spezia in July 1822 Mary Shelley (then aged 25) stayed on in Italy for a year before returning to London with her son Percy. Posthumous poems, edited from manuscript, was the initial step in the work of publicizing Shelley's poetry that was to occupy her for the next fifteen years. It contains the first publication of much of the work of the last period of his life, including Julian and Maddalo (the philosophical Shelley/Byron eclogue) and his last poem, The triumph of life. It also includes many short pieces (often expressions of his fraught emotional life) and translations of classical and modern literature. In publishing his own poetry Shelley had tended to print major works, either on their own, or supported by lesser poems; Posthumous poems takes a more comprehensive view. Readers could begin to gauge the true range and value of his work. Sir Timothy Shelley intervened, however; Posthumous poems was suppressed. Of the 500 copies printed, 191 were destroyed.

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Contents

On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci
139
The Fugitives
145
To Night
154
Copyright

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About the author (1991)

Born in Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex, Shelley was educated at Syon House Academy and Eton, where he acquired the sobriquet "Mad Shelley" for his independent spirit. While at Eton he published Zastrozzi (1810), a Gothic novel. Expelled from Oxford because he refused to retract his atheistic beliefs, Shelley quarreled with his wealthy father and was banished from home. Shelley married impulsively and then abandoned his young wife to run off to Italy with the 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the daughter of the radical feminist and the anarchist philosopher, who was eventually to write Frankenstein). While in Italy, Shelley became close friends with Byron, and the two became objects of endless, notorious rumor. Shelley's personal character was revered by almost everyone who knew him. Extremely generous toward others, frugal with himself, he strove tirelessly for the betterment of humanity. Prometheus Unbound (1820), a lyrical drama in four acts, calls for the regeneration of society through love and for the destruction of all repressive institutions. The Cenci (1819), a verse drama based on real events, is one of the few plays from the romantic period still produced. Shelley's lyrics are marvelously varied and rich in sound and rhythm. Wordsworth regarded him as the best artist among living poets.Adonais (1821), written to honor the memory of John Keats, is one of the supreme elegies in English.The Triumph of Life, which was left incomplete at his death, has been hailed by T. S. Eliot as the nearest approach in English to Dante (see Vol. 2). The "Ode to the West Wind" and "To a Skylark" are anthologized everywhere. Shelley's early death by drowning ended his career just as it was coming into full flower. A revolutionary in his art and life, Shelley is considered by many to be an inspired polemicist and poetic genius. As one of his contemporaries wrote in Etonian (1821), "He is one of the many whom we cannot read without wonder, or without pain...."

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