*Ø* Blogmanac July 8, 1822 | The death of Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (born August 4, 1792) drowned on this day, aged only 29. The great English poet was the eldest son of a Member of Parliament and grandson of a baronet. He was sent to Eton for his education, where he was mocked and bullied as ‘Mad Shelley’, and later to Oxford University from which he was ‘sent down’ – expelled – for circulating a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.
After eloping to Scotland with Harriet Westbrook he became interested in the ideas of the radical philosopher William Godwin. He began to visit Godwin's house and fell in love with Mary Godwin, the sixteen year-old daughter of Godwin by his first wife, the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who had written A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and had died eight days after Mary's birth in 1797.
Smitten by Godwin’s daughter, his marriage with Harriet in tatters, Shelley eloped to France with Mary Godwin and her 15-year-old stepsister Jane 'Claire' Clairmont. The sisters maintained a ménage à trois with the poet in various parts of Europe for the next eight years. In the summer of 1816 Claire urged that they should go to Lake Geneva (to be with the man of her obsession, Lord Byron, with whom she had previously had a one-night stand and to whom she later bore a child). It was at Lake Geneva that, as a result of a bet to see who could write the best Gothic novel, the brilliant young Mary Godwin wrote Frankenstein.
In the Autumn of 1816, Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in London. Two years later, Shelley, pursued by creditors, suffering from ill-health, and understandably a social outcast in England, took his lovers to Italy, “the Paradise of Exiles” as he called it, where they could live more cheaply. In Italy he wrote prolifically much of the best poetry of his career. It was in Italy, however, that he met his demise.
Shelley had often forecast his death by drowning, yet he never learned to swim, nor to navigate. While living at San Terenzo on the Bay of Lerici, he sailed in his small schooner Ariel to Leghorn to welcome his friend, the English poet Leigh Hunt.
Off the coast of Viareggio, Ariel sank and Shelley drowned, together with his friend Edward Williams, and a young sailor boy, Charles Vivian. His fish-eaten body washed up days later and, in the presence of Hunt and fellow poet, Lord Byron, Shelley was cremated on the beach. Strangely, his heart would not burn and Mary carried it with her in a silken shroud for the rest of her life.
The months leading up to his drowning had been an intense and difficult time for Shelley and his circle. In 1821 they had received news of the death of their friend John Keats, the poet for whom Shelley wrote Adonais. At Terenzo, Mary Shelley had suffered a dangerous miscarriage. Allegra, the daughter of Byron and the highly strung Claire had suddenly died. Even before Shelley’s death, the famous literary circle was unravelling.
There was a rumour at the time that Ariel had been rammed by fishing boat, whose crew believed that the rich Lord Byron was on board with gold; years later a fisherman confessed to this but no proof exists today. Another story told of a boat pulling close and offering them help, but a voice, allegedly Shelley's, was heard to cry ‘No!’. Another account, probably fanciful, has it that local sailors shouted to Williams to lower the sails but a tall man, presumably Shelley, stopped him from doing so.
Thus it has been suggested that Percy Bysshe Shelley might have committed suicide, for we know from his letters that he was depressed at the time. He was poor and his relationships were complex. The great Keats had died aged only 25. Shelley was also feeling overshadowed by the genius of Byron, writing “'I have lived too long near Lord Byron and the sun has extinguished the glow-worm”. Although we shall never know the truth of the young genius’s death, he has left a legacy of some of the finest poems in the English language.
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More on Shelley
Complete Works online
Shelley’s Declaration of Rights
Percy Bysshe Shelley (born August 4, 1792) drowned on this day, aged only 29. The great English poet was the eldest son of a Member of Parliament and grandson of a baronet. He was sent to Eton for his education, where he was mocked and bullied as ‘Mad Shelley’, and later to Oxford University from which he was ‘sent down’ – expelled – for circulating a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.
After eloping to Scotland with Harriet Westbrook he became interested in the ideas of the radical philosopher William Godwin. He began to visit Godwin's house and fell in love with Mary Godwin, the sixteen year-old daughter of Godwin by his first wife, the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who had written A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and had died eight days after Mary's birth in 1797.
Smitten by Godwin’s daughter, his marriage with Harriet in tatters, Shelley eloped to France with Mary Godwin and her 15-year-old stepsister Jane 'Claire' Clairmont. The sisters maintained a ménage à trois with the poet in various parts of Europe for the next eight years. In the summer of 1816 Claire urged that they should go to Lake Geneva (to be with the man of her obsession, Lord Byron, with whom she had previously had a one-night stand and to whom she later bore a child). It was at Lake Geneva that, as a result of a bet to see who could write the best Gothic novel, the brilliant young Mary Godwin wrote Frankenstein.
In the Autumn of 1816, Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in London. Two years later, Shelley, pursued by creditors, suffering from ill-health, and understandably a social outcast in England, took his lovers to Italy, “the Paradise of Exiles” as he called it, where they could live more cheaply. In Italy he wrote prolifically much of the best poetry of his career. It was in Italy, however, that he met his demise.
Shelley had often forecast his death by drowning, yet he never learned to swim, nor to navigate. While living at San Terenzo on the Bay of Lerici, he sailed in his small schooner Ariel to Leghorn to welcome his friend, the English poet Leigh Hunt.
Off the coast of Viareggio, Ariel sank and Shelley drowned, together with his friend Edward Williams, and a young sailor boy, Charles Vivian. His fish-eaten body washed up days later and, in the presence of Hunt and fellow poet, Lord Byron, Shelley was cremated on the beach. Strangely, his heart would not burn and Mary carried it with her in a silken shroud for the rest of her life.
The months leading up to his drowning had been an intense and difficult time for Shelley and his circle. In 1821 they had received news of the death of their friend John Keats, the poet for whom Shelley wrote Adonais. At Terenzo, Mary Shelley had suffered a dangerous miscarriage. Allegra, the daughter of Byron and the highly strung Claire had suddenly died. Even before Shelley’s death, the famous literary circle was unravelling.
There was a rumour at the time that Ariel had been rammed by fishing boat, whose crew believed that the rich Lord Byron was on board with gold; years later a fisherman confessed to this but no proof exists today. Another story told of a boat pulling close and offering them help, but a voice, allegedly Shelley's, was heard to cry ‘No!’. Another account, probably fanciful, has it that local sailors shouted to Williams to lower the sails but a tall man, presumably Shelley, stopped him from doing so.
Thus it has been suggested that Percy Bysshe Shelley might have committed suicide, for we know from his letters that he was depressed at the time. He was poor and his relationships were complex. The great Keats had died aged only 25. Shelley was also feeling overshadowed by the genius of Byron, writing “'I have lived too long near Lord Byron and the sun has extinguished the glow-worm”. Although we shall never know the truth of the young genius’s death, he has left a legacy of some of the finest poems in the English language.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
More on Shelley
Complete Works online
Shelley’s Declaration of Rights
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