1792-1822
English Romantic poet and Gothic novelist Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in Field Place, Warnham in West Sussex on this day to a very prominent political and landowning family. His father was a well known member of Parliament, and his mother came from a prominent family in Sussex from whom she inherited substantial land holdings in her own right. Percy was the oldest of a total of 6 children. It was the norm for children born into landed gentry to receive education at home, Shelley was not exception. Also following a pattern of his station, he was sent off to school at the age of ten, and entered Eton College for boys just two years later. While there, is was relentlessly bullied, resulting in him spending a lot of time segregating himself at the school reading. Profoundly interested in science, he spent time in small experiments--some of which would enter into his early writing of fiction, albeit at in disguised or exaggerated forms. After Eaton, he matriculated to University College, Oxford. There, quickly gained a reputation for reading away most of his days, but also while there, he began to write prolifically. He published his first novel in 1810 at just the age of 18--though it was published anonymously due to it's content concerning atheism. It was just the beginning of his troubles in life due to his atheistic beliefs. In 1811 both he and lifelong "cohort" Thomas Jefferson Hogg were expelled from university in the spring of 1811 for co-authoring an "anonymous" pamphlet on atheism. In the meantime however, he had written or co-written two works of prose and one of poetry. After family wrangling to get him readmitted went awry, Shelley instead eloped to Scotland with his 16 year girlfriend Harriet Westbrook--he would have two children with her, before her supposed suicide while very pregnant in 1816--his daughter with her constitutes his only living descendants to this day. He soon tired of her (and her family) and eventually turned his affections to the daughter of his mentor William Godwin, one Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin...we certainly all know where this went. He would, of course, go on to eventually marry her after the tragic death of his first wife; he would have three children with her, only one of which survived infancy. As far as silent film, or just films in general, his second wife--Mary Shelley--eclipses him by leaps and bounds. But there was at least one film, produced in 1919 that is based on Percy Shelley's writing. The Cloud, based on Shelley's poem of the same name, can only be described as an experimental in nature. It featured various landscapes and many cloud formations, set to title cards of the Shelley poem. The film was made by W. A. Van Scoy, who produced a number of nature films between the years 1918 and 1923. It would be 67 years before any other production using his work was produced and that was a made-for-television mini-series of his very first novel Zastrozzi, a 4 part contemporary take on the novel billed as drama, but incorporating elements of fantasy and gothic horror. Probably the most famous production to use elements of his writing, also came out in 1986. Ken Russell's film Gothic was a highly fictionalized nightmarish tale centering around the writing of Frankenstein, it included all of the Ken Russell elements of erotic horror that fans came to expect of him. Shelley was played by Julian Sands, while the Natasha Richardson played his wife Mary--the principle focus of the film (Gabriel Byrne filled in the role of Byron). Since that year, to date, only 4 more productions have used his work for source material, two of them shorts and all of them in the new millennium. The latest two released in 2018: Love's Philosophy--a 2 minute film that sounds in description a great deal like The Cloud and The Burying Party a war film that makes use of the works of four poets, Shelley amongst them (it is currently on Prime). As a funny note...his poetry was also used in the rated X Count the Ways--though the film only credits him as an after-thought in the "thank you" column. For most people, probably the most famous thing about Shelley, other than giving Mary her famous surname, was his untimely death. Despite persistent theories and fantasies about his demise, it appears that he simply got swept away in a sudden storm in the Gulf of Le Spezia just off the coast of Italy. Despite that two other men on board were from a naval background, accounts that the boat--which was custom made for Shelley--gave every indication that it was not very sea-worthy to begin with (the only other theory that had any credence, was that someone had attempted to rob the men and rammed the vessel, but not likely given that there was actually a storm that swept in at the time the men were at sail). All three occupants of the boat drowned. Shelley's body eventually washed ashore; local law required cremation, which was carried out on the beach near where his remains washed up. He died on the 8th of July at the age of just 29, a month shy of his 30th birthday. His ashes were eventually buried at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. He is described as at first being buried near a pyramidical structure abutting the cemetery; his most loyal of friends Edward John Trelawny visited the grave and intensely disliking it's location managed to have the remains disinterred and buried elsewhere in the cemetery next to an old city wall, where Trelawny joined him in the plot next to him some 60 years later. Just on a personal note, given the volume and breadth of his writing over his short lifetime, I am very surprised that his work has not been used more in film and television productions; though he is known as a poet, as mentioned above, he was also a narrative writer and, he was also an avid writer of journals. I am personally hoping this changes in the future. Please read more in links below.
 |
| [Source: retrieved from Flickr] |
 |
| [Source: Sean McKim [Find A Grave]) |
Wikipedia (what in included in this is a very convenient listing of Shelley in popular culture)
No comments:
Post a Comment