Percy Shelley his life and work. Plan: Introduction 3

hideAncestry of Percy Bysshe Shelley

8. Sir Timothy Shelley of Fen Place (c. 1700–1770) 4. Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring (1731–1815) 9. Johanna Plume (b. 1704) 2. Sir Timothy Shelley, 2nd Baronet of Castle Goring (1753–1844) 10. Theobald Michell (d. 1737) 5. Mary Catherine Michell (1734–1760) 11. Mary Tredcroft (c. 1709–1738) 1. Percy Bysshe Shelley 12. John Pilford (1680–1745) 6. Charles Pilford (1726–1790) 13. Mary Michell (1689–c.1775) 3. Elizabeth Pilford, Lady Shelley (1763–1846) 14. William White (1703–1764) 7. Bathia White (1739–1779) 15. Bethiah Waller (1703–1764)

Political, religious and ethical views Politics
Shelley was a political radical influenced by thinkers such as Rousseau, Paine, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Leigh Hunt.^[148] 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.^[149] 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.^[150] Nevertheless, his political writings and activism brought him to the attention of the Home Office and he came under government surveillance at various periods.^[151]
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.^[152]
Nonviolence
Shelley's advocacy of nonviolent resistance was largely based on his reflections on the French Revolution and rise of Napoleon, and his belief that violent protest would increase the prospect of a military despotism.^[153] Although Shelley sympathised with supporters of Irish independence, such as Peter Finnerty and Robert Emmet,^[154] 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."^[156] Shelley supported the 1820 armed rebellion against absolute monarchy in Spain, and the 1821 armed Greek uprising against Ottoman rule.^[157]
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".^[158] 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.^[159][160] His atheism was an important element of his political radicalism as he saw organised religion as inextricably linked to social oppression.^[161] 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.^[162]
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". He 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.^[163]
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.^[164] 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.^[11] 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
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 250 copies which generally sold poorly. Only The Cenci went to an authorised second edition while Shelley was alive^[168] – in contrast, Byron's The Corsair (1814) sold out its first edition of 10,000 copies in one day.^[3]
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.^[169] 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".^[170]
Shelley's poetry soon 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.^[9][171]
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.^[172] 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.^[5] Shelley-like characters frequently appeared in nineteenth-century literature, such as Scythrop in Peacock's Nightmare Abbey,^[173] Ladislaw in George Eliot's Middlemarch and Angel Clare in Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.^[174]
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.^{[5][175][176]} However, Shelley's critical reputation rose from the 1960s 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.^[176] 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".^[177] According to Donald H. Reiman, "Shelley belongs to the great tradition of Western writers that includes Dante, Shakespeare and Milton".
Legacy
Keats–Shelley Memorial House, at right with a red sign by the Spanish Steps, Rome
Shelley died leaving many of his works unfinished, unpublished or published in expurgated versions with multiple errors. There have been a number of recent projects aimed at establishing reliable editions of his manuscripts and works. Among the most notable of these are:^[180][181]

• 
  Reiman, D. H. (gen ed), The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts (23 vols.), New York (1986–2002)
  
• 
  Reiman, D. H. (gen ed), The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics: Shelley (9 vols., 1985–97)
  
• 
  Reiman, D. H. and Fraistat, N., (et al) The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (3 vols.), 1999–2012, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press
  
• 
  Cameron, K. N. and Reiman, D. H. (eds), Shelley and his Circle 1773–1822, Cambridge, Mass., 1961– (8 vols.)
  
• 
  Everest K, Matthews, G. et al (eds), The Poems of Shelley, 1804–1821 (4 vols.), Longman, 1989–2014
  
• 
  Murray, E. B. (ed), The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1, 1811–1818, Oxford University Press, 1995
  

Shelley's long-lost "Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things" (1811) was rediscovered in 2006 and subsequently made available online by the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Conclusion
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. Professor Charlotte Gordon and others have disputed this contention.^[185] 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."^[186]
The Keats–Shelley Memorial Association, founded in 1903, supports the Keats–Shelley House in Rome which is a museum and library dedicated to the Romantic writers with a strong connection with Italy. The association is also responsible for maintaining the grave of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the non-Catholic Cemetery at Testaccio. The association publishes the scholarly Keats–Shelley Review. It also runs the annual Keats–Shelley and Young Romantics Writing Prizes and the Keats–Shelley Fellowship.

List of literature

1. 
   Levine, George R. (1967). Henry Fielding and the dry mock: a study of the techniques of irony in his early works. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. p. 11. ISBN 978-3-11-140039-6. OCLC 971364640.
   
2. 
   ^ Jump up to:a b c d e "Henry Fielding". People. The Dorset Page. Archived from the original on 15 August 2009. Retrieved 9 September 2009.
   
3. 
   ^ Jump up to:a b c d "Henry Fielding Facts". biography.yourdictionary.com. Retrieved 4 May 2017.
   
4. 
   ^ Jump up to:a b c Battestin, Martin C. (23 September 2004). "Fielding, Henry (1707–1754), author and magistrate". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9400. Retrieved 6 April 2019. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) (subscription required)
   
5. 
   ^ Jump up to:a b Levine, George R. (1967). Henry Fielding and the dry mock : a study of the techniques of irony in his early works. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. p. 31. ISBN 978-3-11-140039-6. OCLC 971364640.
   
6. 
   ^ Jump up to:a b c d Liukkonen, Petri. "Henry Fielding". Books and Writers. Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 6 July 2009.
   
7. 
   ^ Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, Volume I. p. 322.
   
8. 
   ^ Battestin, Martin C. (1989). "Introduction". New Essays by Henry Fielding: His Contributions to the Craftsman, 1734-1739 and Other Early Journalism. University Press of Virginia. ISBN 978-0-8139-1221-9., p. xvi
   
9. 
   ^ Battestin (1989), p. xx.
   
10. 
    ^ Battestin (1989), p. xiii.
    
11. 
    ^ Battestin (1989), p. 61.
    
12. 
    ^ Battestin (1989), p. xxiii.