The Real Shelley. New Views of the Poet's Life. Vol. 1

Jeaffreson, John Cordy, 1831-1901Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
1.1M words
Chapters
110

Tags

English Originals Literary Figures Fate and FortuneLiterary GiantsPoet BiographyComplex HumanityRomanticismAcademic StudyTradition Revalued

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.The Real Shelley. New Views of the Poet's Life. Vol. 1 (of 2) by JeaffresonAuthor: Jeaffreson, John Cordy, 1831-1901,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Dec 31, 2012

Editor's review

This volume is the first part of John Cordy Jeaffreson's biography of Shelley and one of the earlier attempts to systematically reconstruct the poet's life. Its value lies not in offering conclusions acceptable to modern scholarship but in displaying the perspective and methods of late nineteenth-century biography: invoking "new views," the author seeks to revise the established image of Shelley, and the book preserves extensive narrative material on the poet's friendships, marriage, and daily life. For general readers, readability is limited by the period prose style and polemical tone; for researchers, it can serve as historical material for examining how Shelley's image has been repeatedly retold in the English-speaking world. It should be read as a tendentious biographical text, not a neutral compilation of facts. The electronic edition comes from a public-domain digitization project and is suitable for targeted searching and close reading of excerpts; it is not recommended as the sole introduction to Shelley's life.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First read a modern Shelley biography to establish a timeline, then return to this book to compare narrative differences.
  2. Take notes chapter by chapter, marking the author's polemical judgments and separating them from factual statements.
  3. Read alongside selected Shelley poems, cross-referencing the biographical narrative with the texts.
  4. If used for a paper, verify the sources cited in the book first; do not quote unchecked material secondhand.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110

FAQ

Is this book suitable as an introduction to Shelley? Not really. Written in the late nineteenth century, it has a strongly polemical style and a clear revisionist intent, and it lacks the annotation conventions of modern biography. Beginners should first read a contemporary general biography to establish a basic timeline and background, then read this book to distinguish valuable material from period bias.
Is this a complete biography or only the first half? According to the title and edition information, this is the first volume of a two-volume biography, not a complete life. Before reading, confirm whether you have also obtained the second volume; otherwise the account of the poet's life will break off midway. If studying only a particular period, check the table of contents first to determine the time span covered by this volume.
What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition? This book comes from a public-domain ebook project, and the text was proofread by volunteers, so minor typesetting or transcription errors may exist. For citation, check against the printed book or another edition; for general reading, the impact is minimal. A reading application with full-text search is recommended for locating names and titles.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Jeaffreson, John Cordy, 1831-1901 Author

John Cordy Jeaffreson (1831–1901) was a British author known for his histories of professions such as law and medicine and for biographies of literary figures. His works focus chiefly on the records and anecdotes of the English legal and medical professions, as in A Book About Lawyers and A Book About Doctors, presenting the daily life and character of these professional groups in a clear, anecdote-rich narrative. He also wrote the two-volume The Real Shelley. New Views of the Poet's Life, which seeks to re-examine Shelley's life through documentary evidence, reflecting his documentary and historically grounded approach. Jeaffreson's writing combines archival compilation with readability, leaving a useful body of work on nineteenth-century British professional history and literary biography. Because public information is limited, details of his life are difficult to set out, yet his subjects and style can still be glimpsed through these works.