Guest Contributors
My goal when I established this site was not just to afford an outlet for my own writing on various subjects, but also to draw attention to what others have to say. I hope that every week I will be able to offer readers fresh ideas and perspectives not only by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but also those in his circle: Mary, Claire Clairmont, Byron, Keats, Leigh Hunt and others.
‘Your sincere admirer’: the Shelleys’ Letters as Indicators of Collaboration in 1821
The Shelleys’ collaborative literary relationship never had a constant dynamic: as with the nature of any human relationship, it changed over time. In Dr. Anna Mercer’s research she aims to identify the shifts in the way in which the Shelleys worked together, a crucial standpoint being that collaboration involves challenge and disagreement as well as encouragement and support. Dr. Mercer suggests despite speculation about an increasing emotional distance between Mary and Percy, the shift in collaboration is not so black-and-white as to reduce the Shelleys’ relationship to one simply of alienation in the later years of their marriage.
Teaching Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Anna Mercer
As an undergraduate at the University of Liverpool, I was given A Defence of Poetry to read for a seminar that – and this sounds hyperbolic, but is in reality no exaggeration – I now realise in retrospect changed my life.