In February 1822 the writer and adventurer Edward John Trelawny arrived in Pisa to make the acquaintance of his heroes Shelley and Byron, leaving a broken marriage and an exotic seafaring career behind him. He became a close companion to them and their circle, and this collection of his reminiscences is one of the most fresh and intriguing documents of the Romantic age. It records his initial meeting with a cynical and flippant Byron, his impressions of a youthful, otherworldly Shelley and, most memorably, the poet's death at sea and the subsequent burning of his body on the sand. Trelawny's Records combine vigorous prose, vivid description and mythmaking to create one of the most memorable portraits of an age. Rosemary Ashton's new introduction explores the mysterious life and quixotic character of Trelawny, and this edition includes all the author's later revisions. Edward John Trelawny (1792-1881) was one of the most curious figures of the English Romantic Movement, and spent his long life travelling extensively as a naval officer, biographer and adventurer. After a brief education, Trelawny was assigned as a volunteer in the Royal Navy by the age of thirteen, and led an unaccomplished naval career until his resignation at nineteen. He met Shelley and Byron in Italy in 1822, where he became fascinated, almost hypnotized, by the two poets. His Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, written after both their deaths, is the end-product of this strange obsession. An incorrigible romancer, Trelawny had three marriages - the second of which was to Tersitza, sister of the Greek warlord Odysseus Androutsos, whose cause he had joined and whose mountain fortress he looked after when Odysseus was arrested. He died after a fall at the age of eighty-eight, in England, and his ashes were buried in Rome in a plot adjacent to Shelley's grave. Rosemary Ashton was educated at the universities of Aberdeen, Heidelberg and Cambridge. She taught English literature at University College London from 1974 to 2012, and is Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature and an Honorary Fellow of UCL. She has published critical biographies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas and Jane Carlyle, George Eliot, and George Henry Lewes, two books on Anglo-German literary and cultural relations in the nineteenth century, The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800-1860 (1980) and Little Germany: Exile and Asylum in Victorian England (1986), and two books about Victorian radicalism, 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London (2006) and Victorian Bloomsbury (2012). David Wright (1920-1994) was born in Johannesburg and came to England aged fourteen to attend the Northampton School for the Deaf. His first poem was published shortly after graduating from Oriel College, Oxford, and he published poetry throughout his life, including Moral Stories (1954), Monologue of a Deaf Man (1958), Metrical Observations (1980) and Elegies (1990). He was both a remarkable poet and a remarkable editor, responsible for, among others, the Penguin Classics edition of Edward Thomas's Selected Poems and Prose, The Penguin Book of English Romantic Verse and, with John Heath-Stubbs, The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Verse. He was also the author of a number of books on Portugal, a biography of Roy Campbell and a memoir, Deafness: A Personal Account.

This classic work by Edward John Trelawny provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of three of the greatest poets of the Romantic era: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Trelawny himself. Through diaries, correspondence, and intimate recollections, Trelawny paints a vivid portrait of these remarkable men, their literary accomplishments, and their tumultuous personal lives. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878 edition. Excerpt: ... remember me to Roberts; tell him he must be content to take me by the hand, though he should not discover a pipe in my mouth, or mustachios on it--the first makes me sick, and the last makes Jane so. Bring with you any new books you may have. There is a Mrs. B. here, with a litter of seven daughters: she is the gayest lady, and the only one who gives dances, for the young squaws are arriving at that age when, as Lord Byron says, they must waltz for their livelihood. When a man gets on this strain, the sooner he concludes his letter the better. Addio. Believe me Very truly yours, E. E. Williams. c CHAPTER III. For nobody can write the life of a man but those who have ate and drank, and lived in social intercourse with him.--Dr. Johnson. Men can be estimated by those who knew them not, only as they are represented by those who knew them.--Ibid. I Was not accustomed to the town life I was then leading, and became as tired of society as townfolks are of solitude. The great evil in solitude is, that your brain lies idle; your muscles expand by exercise, and your wits contract from the want of it. To obviate this evil and maintain the just equilibrium between the body and the brain, I determined to pass the coming winter in the wildest part of Italy, the Maremma, in the midst of the marshes and malaria, with my friends Roberts and Williams; keen sportsmen both--that part of the country being well stocked with woodcocks and wild fowl. For this purpose, I shipped an ample supply of dogs, guns, and other implements of the chase to Leghorn. For the exercise of my brain, I proposed passing my summer with Shelley and Byron, boating in the Mediterranean. After completing my arrangements, I started in the autumn by the French malleposte, from Paris to...

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