Percy Bysshe Shelley

1
Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Steve Wood
• TCCC

2
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

3
1798

• Shelley studies with his clergyman Reverend Evan
  Edwards.

4
1802-1804

• Shelley attends Syon Academy, near London.

5
1804-1810

• Shelley studies at Eton College.

6
1808

• Shelley is engaged to his cousin Harriet Grove.

7
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  and then withdrawn.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.

8
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.

9
1811

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

10
1812

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

11
1812

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

12
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.

13
1813

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

14
1814

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

15
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.

16
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.

17
1815

• Sir Bysshe Shelley, Percys 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.

18
1816

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

19
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.

20
1816

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

21
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.

22
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.

23
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
24
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.

25
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.

26
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 Shelleys 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).

27
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.

28
1820

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

29
1821

• Shelley writes A Defence of Poetry.
• On February 23, Shelleys good friend John Keats
  dies of tuberculosis in Rome. Shelley writes
  Adonais in his memory.

30
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.

31
1822

• Shelley is cremated near where his body was found.

32
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.

33
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.

34
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.

35
1826

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

36
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.

37
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.

38
1841

• Percy Florence graduates from Trinity College.

39
1844

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

40
1845

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

41
1851

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