Shelley

Symonds, John Addington, 1840-1893Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 363K words
Chapters: 37

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Shelley by John Addington SymondsAuthor: Symonds, John Addington, 1840-1893,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Nov 19, 2012

Editor's review

This is a critical biography of Shelley by John Addington Symonds, one of the representative texts of nineteenth-century British literary biography. The author was himself a poet, critic, and literary historian, so the book is more than a chronological life: it examines Shelley's poetic ideals and intellectual temper in the context of his age. The prose carries the rhetorical flavour of Victorian criticism, with firm judgements and a gift for capturing the poet's spiritual portrait as a whole, while preserving a sense of intellectual dialogue between biographer and subject. For Chinese readers it can serve as a companion volume for approaching Shelley the man and the poet: gaining a coherent image of the poet first, then returning to individual poems, makes his radical imagination and lyrical temper easier to understand than reading the poems in isolation. Note that this is a nineteenth-century critical work; some historical details and evaluations have since been revised by later scholarship, so it is best read alongside modern and contemporary biographies.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literature lovers currently reading Shelley's poetry who need background and context
Readers interested in biographies of British Romantic poets and the history of criticism
Students of English or comparative literature who need to understand early Shelley scholarship
Readers who enjoy literary-critical biography and can accept nineteenth-century critical style

Not a good fit for

Readers who want only a concise chronological life and dislike critical commentary
Researchers expecting rigorous textual scholarship and annotation by contemporary academic standards
Readers impatient with Victorian long sentences and moral judgements

Reading tips

Read translations or the originals of Shelley's representative poems first, then compare them with the biography's commentary.
When you reach the author's evaluative passages, mark them for comparison with later scholarship.
Read in sections according to the poet's creative phases, reviewing his intellectual development after each.
If the style feels heavy, read the biographical narrative first and return to the critical chapters afterwards.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

How does this critical biography differ from modern Shelley biographies?

It comes from a nineteenth-century critic and emphasises the overall spiritual portrait and poetic judgement, with the rhetoric and moral perspective of criticism of that time; modern biographies usually offer finer historical detail, stricter annotation, and evaluations revised by later scholarship. Reading the two side by side shows how the image of Shelley has been continually retold.

Can I read this without having read Shelley's poetry?

Yes, but you will get less from it. Much of the commentary centres on specific poems and creative phases; with no familiarity at all, you may remember only biographical anecdotes and miss the critical focus. It is advisable to read Chinese translations of a few representative poems first before starting this biography.

Is the author's critical stance objective?

Do not expect modern neutrality. Symonds has clear sympathy and admiration for Shelley, and his judgements often carry personal critical taste and the colour of his era. Read the author's views as an influential interpretation rather than a final verdict, and note the critical assumptions behind his praise and blame.

Comments

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About the author

Symonds, John Addington, 1840-1893 Author

John Addington Symonds (1840–1893) was a British writer and literary scholar. Publicly available information about the details of his life is limited, but the seventeen works held in this collection clearly indicate his main areas of writing. He devoted himself for many years to the study of the Italian Renaissance; his representative multi-volume work Renaissance in Italy surveys the culture and art of the period with a broad vision, while The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti focuses on the artist's life and work. He also wrote Studies of the Greek Poets, sketches and studies on Italy and Greece, and a study of Percy Bysshe Shelley. His style is elegant and detailed, combining historical scholarship with literary appreciation, and he exerted a lasting influence on the dissemination of knowledge of the Renaissance and of classical Greek literature in the English-speaking world.