Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley Steve Wood TCCC

1792 • Percy Bysshe Shelley is born, the oldest child of Sir Timothy Shelley and Elizabeth Pilford. • Their children include: • Percy Bysshe 1792 • Elizabeth 1794 • Helen 1796 • Mary 1797 • Helen 1799 • Margaret 1801 • John 1806

1798 • Shelley studies with his clergyman Reverend Evan Edwards.

1802-1804 • Shelley attends Syon Academy, near London.

1804-1810 • Shelley studies at Eton College.

1808 • Shelley is engaged to his cousin Harriet Grove.

1810 • Shelley breaks off his engagement. • Zastrozzi is published. • Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire is published and then withdrawn. • He enters University College, Oxford. • There he meets Thomas Jefferson Hogg. • Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson is published. • St. Irvyne is published.

1811 • Shelley meets Harriet Westbrook in January. • In February Shelley and Hogg publish The Necessity of Atheism anonymously. • On March 25, Shelley and Hogg are expelled from Oxford.

1811 • Shelley and Harriet Westbrook elope; they are married in Scotland on August 29. • In the fall, Hogg tries to seduce Harriet.

1812 • Shelley works on behalf of Irish independence; he publishes a number of political pamphlets.

1812 • Percy Bysshe Shelley begins a correspondence with William Godwin in January. • They meet for the first time in October.

1812 • On November 11, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin meets Percy Shelley when he and and his wife Harriet Westbrook dine with the Godwins. She is 15; he is 20.

1813 • Queen Mab is published in May. • A daughter, Ianthe Shelley, is born on June 23.

1814 • A Refutation of Deism is published. • Increasingly despondent over his growing passion for Mary, Shelley attempts suicide.

1814 • On July 28, Mary and Percy Shelley elope to France, accompanied by Claire Clairmont. At the time, Harriet is five months pregnant. • Despite his own views concerning sexual freedom and marriage, William Godwin refuses any communication with his daughter for the next two and a half years. • They take a six-week tour through France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland.

1814 • While in Paris, they leave behind a box of papers. Mary will later suspect it to contain letters "George Byron" uses to blackmail her in 1845. • They return to London in September. Mary is pregnant when they return. Shelley eventually introduces Mary to a friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg. • On November 30, Shelley's wife Harriet gives birth to a son (their second child) Charles.

1815 • Sir Bysshe Shelley, Percy’s grandfather, dies. An annual income of 1000 pounds begins six months later. • In January, Hogg claims to be in love with Mary, while Percy may have been having an affair with Claire. • On February 22, Mary gives birth to a daughter, two months premature. The daughter dies on March 26. • Almost immediately, Mary gets pregnant again.

1816 • On January 24, Mary gives birth to a son, William. • In February, the first volume of poems with Shelley’s name on it appears – Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude, and Other Poems. • “He lived, he died, he sung in solitude.” from Alastor

1816 • Claire begins to carry on an affair with Lord Byron. Eventually, Mary, Percy, and Claire leave England to follow Byron (and to avoid Percy's creditors). They settle in Geneva by the end of May, and live there for the summer.

1816 • Mary Shelley begins Frankenstein in response to a ghost story contest and a dream.

1816 • The family, including the now-pregnant Claire, returns to England at the end of the summer. • In October, Mary's half sister Fanny commits suicide. • In December, the drowned body of Shelley's wife Harriet is found. Pregnant, she had been missing for a month. • On December 30, Shelley and Mary are married, and William Godwin finally reconciles with his daughter.

1817 • Claire gives birth to Lord Byron's daughter (Alba, then later named Allegra by her father) in January. • In March, Shelley is denied custody of his children by Harriet. • Mary completes Frankenstein while she herself is pregnant for the third time. • She gives birth to a daughter, Clara, on September 2.

1818 • Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus is published on March 11. Several reviewers believe that Percy had actually written the novel. • Percy, meanwhile, is working on some of his most famous poetry, including Prometheus Unbound. Shelley writing Prometheus Unbound by Joseph Severn

1818 • In the summer of 1818, Percy, Mary and the children chase Byron around Europe, trying to reconcile him with his daughter. • During a hurried journey in Italy in September, Clara gets sick and dies.

1818 • On December 27, an infant Elena Adelaide is born in Naples. When the child is registered on February 27, 1819, the parents are listed as Percy Shelley and Marina Padurin. The identity of this child remains a mystery. Some theories claim the girl was Percy's illegitimate child; other suggest that she was an infant he planned to adopt in order to replace Clara.

1819 • The Shelleys continue to live in Italy. • Mary gets pregnant again early in the year. • On June 7, their son William dies of malaria. • “We came to Italy thinking to do Shelley’s health good – but the climate is not by any means warm enough to be of benefit to him, yet it is that that has destroyed my two children” (Letter from June 29, 1819).

1819 • On November 12, Mary gives birth to the only child that would survive her and her husband; they named this second son Percy Florence.

1820 • Mary resumes writing. • Prometheus Unbound is published. • The Shelley family is blackmailed over the mysterious Elena Adelaide. That child dies in June.

1821 • Shelley writes “A Defence of Poetry.” • On February 23, Shelley’s good friend John Keats dies of tuberculosis in Rome. Shelley writes Adonais in his memory.

1822 • Allegra Byron dies in April. • On May 12, Shelley receives his boat, the Don Juan. He renames the boat Ariel. • Mary has a miscarriage on June 16. • Percy and Edward Williams sail to Leghorn on July 1. On July 8, they set sail home to San Terenzo. • Sometime after July 8, Percy Shelley drowns in a sailing accident. His body is found on July 18.

1822 • Shelley is cremated near where his body was found.

1823 • Percy Shelley's father initially refuses to support his grandson unless Mary gives him up; she refuses. • A second edition of Frankenstein is published. • In July, Mary and her son Percy return to England.

1824 • A volume of Percy's unpublished poems is published, a volume edited by Mary with a signed preface. Mary then learns that Shelley's father will stop Percy Florence's allowance until she both stops publication and promises not to publish any more of her husband's writings in Sir Timothy's lifetime. Mary reluctantly agrees.

1826 • Mary's The Last Man is published. • It is an apocalyptic story of the end of the world, a type of story that would become a staple of science fiction. • It is also a thinly veiled portrait of both her husband and Lord Byron.

1826 • After the publication of The Last Man, Shelley’s father temporarily cuts off his support. • Shelley’s son by his first wife dies, and Percy Florence becomes Sir Timothy Shelley’s only male heir.

1838 • Percy Shelley's father finally relents on allowing his son's works to be published, although he does not want any mention made of his son's life in an introduction or biographical sketch.

1839 • Mary's four-volume edition of Poetical Words of Percy Bysshe Shelley is published; she dedicates the edition to Percy Florence. She gets around the prohibition of Shelley's father with her preface and notes to the individual poems. • She also edits and has published her husband's Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments.

1841 • Percy Florence graduates from Trinity College.

1844 • Percy Shelley's father dies; Percy Florence inherits his estate and title.

1845 • Someone claiming to be Lord Byron's son tries unsuccessfully to blackmail Mary.

1851 • Mary dies on February 1. • Among her personal effects is found Percy’s heart, wrapped in a copy of his poem “Adonais” (written for his dead friend John Keats).

Percy Bysshe Shelley