Shelley's Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family
Few families enjoy such a remarkable reputation for their contribution to the literature and intellectual life of Britain as the Godwins and the Shelleys. The Bodleian online exhibition 'Shelley's Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family' explores how the reputation of this great literary family was shaped by the selective release of documents and manuscripts into the public domain. It also provides a fascinating insight into the real lives of a family that was blessed with genius but marred by tragedy.'
Episodes
December 2, 2010 • 4 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. In the months immediately following Shelley's death Mary lived at Albaro on the outskirts of Genoa. Her only regular companions were her young son, Percy Florence, and the journal she began on 2 October 1822. To this 'Journal of Sorrow' she confided her innermost thoughts: 'White paper - wilt thou be my confident? I will trust thee fully, for none shall see what I write.' To be sure, Mary wou...
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December 2, 2010 • 3 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. This is the letter Godwin wrote to Mary after hearing of Shelley's death. Initially he seems more sorry for himself than for his daughter, complaining of her failure to write to him, but he then talks hopefully of their reconciliation. He and Mary had not seen each other for nearly four years, and for some time Shelley had intercepted Godwin's letters to Mary because, he said, their dismal co...
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December 2, 2010 • 3 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. 'Everybody is in despair and every thing in confusion' writes Shelley in his last letter to Mary. He was in Pisa to discuss a new journal, The Liberal, with Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron. Shelley had been delayed there by Hunt's personal situation (his wife Marianne had been told she did not have long to live) and by Byron's complicated affairs. He hints that Edward Williams might sail back to th...
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December 2, 2010 • 8 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. This great elegy was prompted by the news of the death of John Keats in Rome, and by Shelley's belief that Keats's illness was caused by the hostile notices his work had been given in the Quarterly Review. Shelley had the poem printed in Pisa under his own supervision, thereby ensuring its speedy appearance and its textual accuracy.
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December 2, 2010 • 2 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley worked on 'The Triumph of Life', a dark and visionary poem, while living at the Villa Magni. At the time of his death it was still in a very incomplete state but despite this it is generally considered one of his major poetic achievements. Life is envisioned as a remorseless triumphal procession: a chariot is driven blindly through a madly dancing crowd, taking with it 'a captive mult...
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December 2, 2010 • 3 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley presented this light-hearted poem, copied out in his best hand, with the guitar he gave to Jane Williams in 1822. Taking his cue, perhaps, from the Shakespearean Christian name of the guitar's maker, Ferdinando, he casts himself and the Williamses as characters from The Tempest: they are the lovers Miranda and Ferdinand, he is Ariel, the spirit of fire and air. The wood of the guitar ...
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December 2, 2010 • 3 mins
Part of the Shelly's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley's best-known poem was written in Florence in late 1819. Technically it is a series of four sonnets written in 'terza rima', the verse-form Shelley would use again, with similar fluency, in his final poem, The Triumph of Life. The west wind is an agent of change: with seasonal rejuvenation comes a personal rebirth which will, in turn, inspire the 'unawakened Earth'.
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December 2, 2010 • 51 secs
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. 'Ozymandias' is the Greek name for Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for sixty-seven years from 1279 to 1213 BC. Ramses II was a military conqueror and a great builder, but Shelley's sonnet describes how the achievements of even the mightiest tyrants are obliterated by time. Only the Pharaoh's arrogant passions, as expressed in the ruined statue, have survived, outliving both the sculptor ('The hand...
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December 2, 2010 • 4 mins
Mary Shelley drafted Frankenstein in two tall notebooks. The first notebook was probably purchased in Geneva, the second several months later in England. They were later disbound, and now exist as single sheets. Shown here is an original opening from the Geneva notebook, containing Mary's draft of the turning-point in the novel: the moment when Frankenstein's Creature comes to life.
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December 2, 2010 • 3 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Harriet Shelley drowned herself in December 1816, aged twenty-one. Her body was recovered from the Serpentine on 10 December, and an inquest into the death of one 'Harriet Smith' was held the following day. Although her precise movements in the months leading up to her death are uncertain, it is clear that she was living away from home, that she had taken a lover, and that she was pregnant. T...
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December 2, 2010 • 1 min
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley and Mary arrived back in London to face the almost universal disapproval of family and friends, and severe money problems. Shelley was now financially responsible for Mary and Claire as well as Harriet, who was heavily pregnant with their second child. Godwin refused to see him, but drew on his resources. Mary wrote this impassioned letter to Shelley when he was in hiding from his num...
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December 2, 2010 • 5 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley and Mary eloped at 4.15 am on 28 July 1814, accompanied by Mary's step-sister Jane Clairmont. They were pursued by Mrs Godwin (Claire's mother), who caught up with them the following day at Calais, but failed to persuade them to return. On 2 August Shelley, Mary and Claire reached Paris, where they purchased this notebook. Shelley wrote up their dramatic flight from England, the storm...
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December 2, 2010 • 1 min
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Using false names, Shelley sent copies of The Necessity of the Atheism to 'men of thought and learning', including bishops and clergymen. Here, writing as 'Jennings Stukeley', he sends 'a tract' to William Godwin, expressing his hope that, if correct, it will 'festinate' the impact of Political Justice. This unusual word, meaning to hasten, is typical of the learned pose Shelley adopts. He ma...
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December 2, 2010 • 8 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Godwin's memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft has been called the first modern biography. At the time, however, its frankness and emotional candour provoked general outrage. Godwin did not hesitate to include the most painful and scandalous episodes in Mary's life: her brutal, drunken father; her affair with Gilbert Imlay and the birth of their illegitimate daughter, Fanny; her two suicide attempts;...
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December 2, 2010 • 1 min
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Even after their marriage Godwin and Wollstonecraft preferred to live independently during the day, and communicate by correspondence. They regularly exchanged anything from long, carefully composed letters to short notes dashed off on scraps of paper. Shown here are Mary's last three notes to Godwin, written while she was waiting impatiently for the delivery of her child ('the animal'), and ...
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December 2, 2010 • 3 mins
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. In her most famous work Mary Wollstonecraft argued that if women were educated in the same way as men they would perform as well. And that society was wasting its assets by failing to educate them and to offer them the opportunity to work in the same areas as menMen are as much corrupted by being tyrants as women by being subject to them, she pointed out. Women should be trained for the profe...
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