I have a treat in store for members of the Shelley Nation.  Michael Demson’s book, Masks of Anarchy tells the story of two political radicals and the poem that brought them together:  Percy Shelley and the early 20th Century union organizer he inspired, Pauline Newman.  Demson, in collaboration with illustrator Summer McClinton, accomplishes this through an unusual medium: a radical comic. This gets my RPBS "Stamp of Champ, You Must Read This" recommendation! You can get the eBook for about $14 CDN and the paperback for $8.  This is an unbelievable bargain. Just DO IT!

In May of 1820, Percy Byshe Shelley, who was living at Pisa at the time, in Italy, wrote two letters to his friend Leigh Hunt. In the letter Shelley asked if Hunt knew if “any bookseller would like to publish a little volume of popular songs, wholy political, and destined to awaken and direct the imagination of reformers.“ Hunt declined to publish the collection and what a loss it was. In 1990, 170 years later, Paul Foot and Redwoods books set out to right the wrong by collecting together those works which they thought Shelley most likely would have included in the collection. It’s been 30 years since this collection was published. And now, I assume in honour of the 200th anniversary of Peterloo, Redwoods is republishing this collection. The new edition has been updated and we are now treated to an afterword by the brilliant Irish Shelley scholar Paul O’Brien. Ciarán O’Rourke is a brilliant young poet and Marxist from Ireland. He is the founder and editor of the online archive Island's Edge Poetry which features interviews with contemporary Irish poets about their work and craft. His first collection, The Buried Breath, is available from Irish Pages Press. He is based in Dublin, Ireland. Read his review of the new edition here!

Professor John Mullan analyses how Shelley transformed his political passion, and a personal grudge, into poetry.

Most of my focus at The Real Percy Bysshe Shelley is on Percy Shelley’s poetry and prose - and his radical politics in particular. But every now and then, it is important to draw attention to other poets in his circle; particularly those whom he admired. So today I want draw everyone’s attention to the recent digital publication of Keats’ two volume copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

This novel by the brilliant American poet and novelist Elinor Wylie imagines that instead of drowning, Shelley was rescued and taken to America where he lived out his life.

Mark Andresen is a long time follower of this blog and also the creator of his own. The Pan Review is a delightfully eclectic and articulate review of issues current in the arts and literary scene. He regularly features author interviews.  A recent Mary Shelley-themed issue, for example, featured an interview with the sculptor Bryan Moore (who will soon unveil his bronze bust of Mary Shelley at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle), Mark's review of Fiona Sampson's disappointingly adversarial biography of Mary Shelley and an interview with yours truly in which I answered questions about how Shelley came into my life and what I think is important about him.

I have been meaning to recommend Percy Bysshe Shelley Poet and Revolutionary by Jacqueline Mulhallen to the Shelley Nation for a long, long time. I kept putting it off because I wanted to do the book full justice - I think it is THAT important. I can put it off no longer. Connecting modern audiences with Shelley's radical politics and philosophy is actually urgent.  As no less a person than Nicholas Roe (Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews) says: Mulhallen's book is "Fresh, clear and compelling, this is the best compact account of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s revolutionary life currently available."

Shelley and the Musico-Poetics of Romanticism explores Shelley’s near lifelong fascination with music and the role it played in the creation of his poetry and his theory of the imagination. As an independent scholar anxious to bring Shelley to the attention of a larger audience, books such as this are an important tool because they can connect Shelley to people who come from very divergent walks of life.

Alexander Larman's new book Byron's Women is just out in paperback and you need to buy it; now.  In what may be one of the best written blogs I have come across in a very long time, Larman encapsulates his thesis; and he does not mince words:

The greatest falsehood propagated about Byron is that he loved women. On the contrary, his attitude towards those in his life was mainly a mixture of contempt, violence and lordly dismissal.

In the pages of his book it would appear that we finally we have someone speaking truth to power and by power I mean what Larman calls the "Byron establishment"; an establishment which he asserts has been "permeated by a lazy misogyny for decades".

I wish I could find a simple way to convince people to read about one of my heroes, Marcus Tullius Cicero.  Today he seems so remote.  However a very great deal of our modern world (our laws, our language our philosophy) is founded upon his thinking. And for those of you interested in Shelley, he is actually extremely important.  Shelley was very familiar with his writings and said of him, "Cicero is, in my estimation, one of the most admirable characters in the world." Much of the underpinning for Shelley's skepticism is derived from his reading of Cicero; whose philosophical dialogues are cited in his letters as a "favourite".  The "Tuscan Disputations" were an extremely important source for aspects of "Prometheus Unbound". If you want to know Shelley, you must understand Cicero.

Tony Astill has done students of Shelley an inestimable favour by offering a gorgeous facsimile edition of Charton’s "Glaciers de Chamouny".   If you want to get a sense of what Shelley saw with his own eyes, this is the book for you because it EXACTLY follows the route he followed and contains startling, contemporary images of Chamonix, the Mont Blanc Massif and the Glaciers of Chamonix: Glace de Mer and Bossons.