Based on The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols., ed. Frederick L. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)
Compiled by David S. Miall, University of Alberta
Volume II: Shelley in Italy
The pointers provided in the following table are designed to enable the Letters to be consulted for (a) significant moments in Shelley's biography, and (b) some of Shelley's key ideas and responses. In many cases the letter designated is only the first of a series. In a few cases, indicated by multiple dates (e.g., 14/17 Feb 1811) two consecutive letters that deal with the same topic have been indicated. The extracts quoted often appear on a later page than the page cited, which is the page on the which the letter begins.
Letters with an askerisk against the Topic are available in a fuller version on Romanticism: The CD-ROM.
| PAGE | DATE | RECIPIENT | TOPIC | EXTRACT |
| 3 | 6 Apr 1818 | Peacock | pleasure at arrival in Italy | Our journey was somewhat painful from the cold & in no other manner interesting until we passed the Alps: of course I except the Alps themselves, but no sooner had we arrived in Italy than the loveliness of the earth & the serenity of the sky made the greatest difference in my sensations |
| 6 | 20 Apr 1818 | Peacock | account of visit to Lake Como | The union of culture & the untameable profusion & loveliness of nature is here so close that the line where they are divided can hardly be discovered. |
| 9 | 22 Apr 1818 | Byron | Clare's interest as a mother in Allegra | You write as if from the instant of its departure all future intercourse were to cease between Clare and her child. This I cannot think you ought to have expected, or even to have desired. |
| 19 | 10 July 1818 | Gisbornes | translating Plato's Symposium | |
| 23 | 25 July 1818 | Peacock | bathing in pool at Bagni di Lucca | My custom is to undress and sit on the rocks, reading Herodotus, until the perspiration has subsided, and then to leap from the edge of the rock into this fountain |
| 34 | 23 Aug 1818 | Mary | arrives in Venice with Clare and Allegra | We past the laguna in the middle of the night in a most violent storm of wild rain & lightning. It was very curious to observe the elements above in a state of such tremendous convulsion & the surface of the water almost calm |
| 40 | 25 Sept 1818 | Claire | death of second child Clara at Venice | this unexpected stroke reduced Mary to a kind of despair |
| 41 | 8 Oct 1818 | Peacock | on Venice, under Austrian control | The Austrians take sixty percent in taxes, & impose free quarters on the inhabitants. A horde of German soldiers as vicious & more disgusting than the Venetians themselves insult these miserable people. |
| 45 | 6 Nov 1818 | Peacock | en route to Naples, journey to Ferrara | |
| 54 | 20 Nov 1818 | Peacock | account of journey to Rome | Behold me in this capital of the vanished world |
| 57 | 17-18 Dec 1818 | Peacock | sights of Rome, Naples, visit Vesuvius etc.* | [The Coliseum] has been changed by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the wild-olive the myrtle & the fig tree, & threaded by little paths which wind among its ruined stairs & immeasurable galleries |
| 70 | 23-24 Jan 1819 | Peacock | visit to Pompeii* | They lived in harmony with nature, & the interstices of their incomparable columns, were portals as its were to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. |
| 77 | 25 Feb 1819 | Peacock | visit to Paestum; criticism of Michelangelo | I cannot but think the genius of this artist highly overrated. He has not only no temperance not modesty no feeling for the just boundaries of art . . . but he has no sense of beauty |
| 83 | 23 Mar 1819 | Peacock | return to Rome; Caracalla, Forum, Pantheon, etc.* | Never was any desolation more sublime & lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines filled with flowering shrubs whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stones. |
| 91 | 6 Apr 1819 | Peacock | society of Rome, politics, women | I have seen two women in society here of the highest beauty, their brows & lips and the moulding of the face modelled with sculptural exactness, & the dark luxuriance of their hair floating over their fine complexions |
| 97 | 8 June 1819 | Peacock | death of William, first child, in Rome | it seems to me as if, hunted by calamity as I have been, that I should neve[r] recover any cheerfulness again -- |
| 98 | 21-21 June 1819? | Peacock | in Livorno; on Nightmare Abbey | I think Scythrop a character admirably conceived & executed, & I know not how to praise sufficiently the lightness chastity & strength of the language of the whole. |
| 101 | 20 July 1819 | Peacock | hopes for staging of The Cenci | What I want you to do is to procure for me its presentation at Covent Garden. The principal character Beatrice is precisely fitted for Miss O Neil |
| 118 | 9 Sept 1819 | Peacock | receives news of Peterloo massacre | The tyrant here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood. May their execrable lessons not be learnt with equal docility! |
| 121 | 27 Sept 1819 | Hunt | moving to Florence; on Boccaccio | Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of the fair ideal of human life considered in its social relations. His more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. |
| 126 | 15 Oct 1819 | Ollier | sends Cenci, Prometheus; review of Revolt of Islam | The droll remarks of the Quarterly, and Hunt's kind defence, arrived as safe as such poison, and safer than such an antidote, usually do. |
| 136 | 3 Nov 1819 | Examiner | protests trial of Carlisle for publishing Paine | we see on the one hand men professing to act by the public authority who put in practice the trampling down & murdering an unarmed multitude without distinction of sex or age, & on the other a tribunal which punishes men for asserting that deeds of the same character, transacted in a distant age & country were not done by the command of God. |
| 150 | 13 Nov 1819 | Hunt | Mary gives birth to Percy Florence | You may imagine this is a great relief & a great comfort to me amongst all ny misfortunes past present & to come. |
| 183 | 16 Apr 1820 | Medwin | encourages Medwin to come to Italy | |
| 197 | 26 May 1820 | Byron | on Allegra; praises Don Juan, I & II | Where did you learn all these secrets? I should like to go to school there. |
| 206 | 30 June 1820 | Gisbornes | embarrassed by Godwin's request for a loan | If you perceive that the money will not fulfil its object, or that you cannot enforce the intended appropriation of it, I entreat you to refuse to lend it at all. |
| 220 | 27 July 1820 | Keats | invites him to Italy to cure consumption | This consumption is a disease particularly fond of people who write such good verses as you have done, and with the assistance of an English winter it can often indulge its selection |
| 224 | 7 Aug 1820 | Godwin | rejects any further claims for money | I have given you within a few years the amount of a considerable fortune, & have destituted myself, for the purpose of realising it of nearly four times the amount. |
| 230 | 17 Aug 1820 | Southey | defends his virtue | You select a single passage out of a life otherwise not only spotless but spent in impassioned pursuit of virtue, which looks like a blot, merely because I regulated my domestic arrangements without deferring to the notions of the vulgar |
| 239 | 29 Oct 1820 | M. Hunt | has read Keats; inquires his whereabouts | I consider his a most valuable life, & I am deeply interested in his safety. I intend to be the physician both of his body & his soul |
| 241 | 29 Oct 1820 | Claire | consoles Claire during her absence | You know, however, whatever you shall determine on, where to find one ever affectionate Friend, to whom your absence is too painful for your return ever to be unwelcome. |
| 244 | 8 Nov 1820 | Peacock | reads Keats's Hyperion; his own poor reception | it is certainly an astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I confess I had not before. |
| 251 | ? Nov 1820 | Gifford | protests review of Keats's Endymion (unsent) | Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this review |
| 254 | 2 Jan 1821? | Claire | visiting Emilia Viviani in convent | She continues to enchant me infinitely; and I soothe myself with the idea that I make the discomfort of her captivity lighter to her by demonstration of the interest which she has awakened in me. |
| 256 | 16 Jan 1821 | Claire | John and Jane Williams arrive in Pisa | The Williams's are come & Mrs. W. dined here to day, an extremely pretty & gentle woman -- apparently not very clever. |
| 261 | 15 Feb 1821 | Peacock | responds to Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry | your anathemas against poetry itself excited me to a sacred rage . . . I had the greatest possible desire to break a lance with you, within the lists of a magazine, in honour of my mistress Urania |
| 262 | 16 Feb 1821 | Ollier | sends Epipsychidion for limited publication | It is to be published simply for the esoteric few; and I make its author a secret, to avoid the malignity of those who turn sweet food into poison |
| 272 | March 1821 | Literary Miscellany | early draft of Defence of Poetry | |
| 275 | 20 March 1821 | Ollier | sends Defence of Poetry for publication | |
| 280 | 4 Apr 1821 | Medwin | hears that Keats is dying in Rome | [In fact Keats had died on February 23] |
| 285 | 17/19 Apr 1821 | Reveley | designs for a boat to be used around Pisa | |
| 293 | 5 June 1821 | Gisborne | writing Adonais on the death of Keats | It is a highly wrought piece of art, perhaps better in point of composition than any thing I have written. |
| 298 | 11 June 1821 | Ollier | seeks to prevent republication of Queen Mab | I recollect it is villainous trash; & I dare say much better fitted to injure than to serve the cause which it advocates. |
| 308 | 16 July 1821 | Byron | expects Byron to write a great poem | I still feel impressed with the persuasion that you ought -- and if there is prophecy in hope, that you will write a great and connected poem |
| 316 | 7 Aug 1821 | Mary | refutes story that Clare was his mistress | It seems that Elise . . . has persuaded the Hoppners of a story so monstrous & incredible that they must have been prone to believe any evil to have believe such assertions upon such evidence. |
| 320 | 8 Aug 1821 | Mary | visiting Byron; sights at Ravenna | Our way of life is this . . . L.B. gets up at two -- breakfasts -- we talk read &c. until six then we ride, & dine at eight . . . |
| 331 | 11 Aug 1821 | Mary | Byron has decided to move to Pisa | He wishes for a large & magnificent house, but he has furniture of his own which he would send from Ravenna. -- Inquire if any of the large palaces are to be let. |
| 333 | 15 Aug 1821 | Mary | account of visiting Allegra at her convent | Her predominant foible seems the love of distinction & vanity -- and this is a plant which produces good or evil according to the gardeners skill. |
| 343 | 26 Aug 1821 | Byron | has secured a house for Byron in Pisa | I have taken your house for 400 crowns a year, and signed the compact on your part |
| 343 | 26 Aug 1821 | Hunt | invited Hunt to Italy to publish a journal | He [Byron] proposes that you should come and go shares with him and me, in a periodical work, to be conducted here; in which each of the contracting parties should publish all their original compositions, and share the profits. |
| 352 | 25 Sept 1821 | Ollier | describes and praises Mary's Valperga | I know nothing in Walter Scott's novels which at all approaches to the beauty and sublimity of this -- creation |
| 355 | 6 Oct 1821 | Hunt | advises Hunt on travelling to Pisa | |
| 357 | 21 Oct 1821 | Byron | praises originality of Don Juan | I am content -- You are building up a drama, such as England has not seen, and the task is sufficiently noble & worthy of you. |
| 365 | 11 Nov 1821 | Ollier | sends Hellas for publication | What little interest this Poem may excite, depends upon it's immediate publication |
| 373 | 11 Jan 1822? | Peacock | living near Byron at Pisa | Lord Byron is established now, & we are constant companions: no small relief after the dreary solitude of the understanding & imagination in which we past the first years of our expatriation, yoked to all sorts of miseries & discomforts. |
| 379 | 25 Jan 1822 | Hunt | arrangements for the Hunts' journey to Pisa | Lord Byron has assigned you a portion of his palace, & Mary & I had occupied ourselves in furnishing it. |
| 384 | 26 Jan 1822 | Williams | sends melancholy poem | I have lit upon these [lines]; which as they are too dismal for me to keep I send them you |
| 387 | 26 Jan 1822 | Gisborne | wishes to change publisher from Ollier | I will have nothing more to do with Ollier on whatever terms or for whatever apology. |
| 396 | 20 Mar 1822 | Claire | Byron's obstinacy over Claire seeing Allegra | L. B. is at present a man of 12 or 15 thousand a year, he is on the spot, a man reckless of the ill he does others, obstinate to desperation in the pursuance of his plans or his revenge. |
| 399 | 24 Mar 1822 | Claire | rebukes Claire for plan to kidnap Allegra; the Masi affray at Pisa | Your late plans about Allegra seems to me in its present form pregnant with irremediable infamy to all the actors in it except yourself; in any form wherein I must actively cooperate, with inevitable destruction. |
| 404 | 10 Apr 1822 | Hunt | resents his supposed inferiority to Byron | Certain it is, that Lord Byron has made me bitterly feel the inferiority which the world has presumed to place between us and which subsists nowhere in reality but in our own talents, which are not our own but Nature's -- or in our rank, which is nto our own but Fortune's. |
| 413 | 28 Apr 1822 | Mary | moving to Casa Magni near Lerici | |
| 415 | 3 May 1822 | Byron | Claire's response to death of Allegra | I will not describe her grief to you; you have already suffered too much |
| 419 | 13 May 1821 | Roberts | praises his new boat, the Don Juan | She is a most beautiful boat, & so far surpasses both mine & Williams's expectations that it was with some difficulty that we could persuade ourselves that you had not sent us the Bolivar by mistake. |
| 434 | 18 June 1822 | Gisborne | his small circle at Lerici | I detest all society -- almost all, at least -- and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that is hateful and tiresome in it. |
| 441 | 29 June 1822 | Smith | bad state of England and Ireland | England appears to be in a desperate condition, Ireland still worse |
| 443 | 4 July 1822 | Mary | confusion on Hunt's arrival at Pisa | Things are in the worst possible situation with respect to poor Hunt. I find Marianne in a desperate state of health . . . |
Last updated August 9th 2003