Why Do I Like Shelley So Much, You Ask?
Today the most strange thing happened to me.
I was at work, a photocopy of an essay on Percy in hand, having a cup of cold tea on my free hour between classes, when suddenly in comes my boss to the room and says: "Oh, reading again, I see. Is that the dead poet again?"
I mutely nodded. People who sneer at Pretty Percy's regrettably dead state of being do not deserve any verbal response from me. Humph.
Undeterred, the woman thus continues: "Well, haha! You really do like his work... But tell me, why do you like him so much? He wasn't much of a good writer. One would think you'd go for Byron, or Keats! Keats was great! Have you read his 'Ode to a Grecian Urn'?"
Let me tell you that I have never in my life felt so appalled and...outraged.
Me? Read sodding Keats?! As if. I'd rather die and go to Hell without my Shelley than have to suffer a single line written by that insufferable, ungrateful twat!
And how dares she insinuate his work sucked?! The nerve!
To make myself feel better, I searched the net and found this. Something from dear Percy's life I had yet to discover... (a bit late to do anything about it but, oh well)
Found, the lost letters of Shelley the atheist
By Will Bennett, Art Sales Correspondent Last Updated: 1:35am GMT 24/02/2005
A lost series of letters by the Percy Shelley in which he masqueraded as a clergyman to try to persuade the recipient to become an atheist has been found.
Experts on the 19th-century poet have long known of the existence of the letters to Ralph Wedgwood, a member of the Staffordshire pottery family, but their contents and whereabouts remained a mystery until a specialist from Christie's auction house discovered them recently.
They were rescued by Crispin Jackson, the head of the books department at Christie's South Kensington, from a trunk full of papers due to be thrown away or sent to a car boot sale. "The house was crammed with stuff and while I was there I found a trunk and opened it," he said yesterday. "I discovered that it was full of papers and delved down."
At the bottom of the trunk, which contained books of autographs of long dead show business stars, Mr Jackson found letters by Charles Dickens, H G Wells and General Charles Gordon, before he spotted one signed "the Reverend Percy Bysshe Shelley".
(me: "Reverend Percy Bysshe Shelley" OMG!! *squeals*)
He discovered four by Shelley and the same number by his fellow atheist Thomas Jefferson Hogg, all addressed to Mr Wedgwood, who was a devout Christian.
In one of the 1810 letters Shelley, who was 18 at the time, wrote: "Christ never existed … the fall of man, the whole fabric indeed of superstition which it supports can no longer obtain the credit of philosophers."
The letters were part of a campaign by Shelley and Hogg that led to their expulsion from Oxford University.
The owners, who had no idea that the papers were in the trunk, inherited them from a neighbour who collected material relating to Staffordshire.
The letters will be auctioned at Christie's main London saleroom in St James's on June 8, when they are expected to fetch £20,000 to £30,000.
How could I not love Shelley so much, would be a better question...
Oh, and here's another pic for my collection:
Pretty Pretty lad.
I was at work, a photocopy of an essay on Percy in hand, having a cup of cold tea on my free hour between classes, when suddenly in comes my boss to the room and says: "Oh, reading again, I see. Is that the dead poet again?"
I mutely nodded. People who sneer at Pretty Percy's regrettably dead state of being do not deserve any verbal response from me. Humph.
Undeterred, the woman thus continues: "Well, haha! You really do like his work... But tell me, why do you like him so much? He wasn't much of a good writer. One would think you'd go for Byron, or Keats! Keats was great! Have you read his 'Ode to a Grecian Urn'?"
Let me tell you that I have never in my life felt so appalled and...outraged.
Me? Read sodding Keats?! As if. I'd rather die and go to Hell without my Shelley than have to suffer a single line written by that insufferable, ungrateful twat!
And how dares she insinuate his work sucked?! The nerve!
To make myself feel better, I searched the net and found this. Something from dear Percy's life I had yet to discover... (a bit late to do anything about it but, oh well)
Found, the lost letters of Shelley the atheist
By Will Bennett, Art Sales Correspondent Last Updated: 1:35am GMT 24/02/2005
A lost series of letters by the Percy Shelley in which he masqueraded as a clergyman to try to persuade the recipient to become an atheist has been found.
Experts on the 19th-century poet have long known of the existence of the letters to Ralph Wedgwood, a member of the Staffordshire pottery family, but their contents and whereabouts remained a mystery until a specialist from Christie's auction house discovered them recently.
They were rescued by Crispin Jackson, the head of the books department at Christie's South Kensington, from a trunk full of papers due to be thrown away or sent to a car boot sale. "The house was crammed with stuff and while I was there I found a trunk and opened it," he said yesterday. "I discovered that it was full of papers and delved down."
At the bottom of the trunk, which contained books of autographs of long dead show business stars, Mr Jackson found letters by Charles Dickens, H G Wells and General Charles Gordon, before he spotted one signed "the Reverend Percy Bysshe Shelley".
(me: "Reverend Percy Bysshe Shelley" OMG!! *squeals*)
He discovered four by Shelley and the same number by his fellow atheist Thomas Jefferson Hogg, all addressed to Mr Wedgwood, who was a devout Christian.
In one of the 1810 letters Shelley, who was 18 at the time, wrote: "Christ never existed … the fall of man, the whole fabric indeed of superstition which it supports can no longer obtain the credit of philosophers."
The letters were part of a campaign by Shelley and Hogg that led to their expulsion from Oxford University.
The owners, who had no idea that the papers were in the trunk, inherited them from a neighbour who collected material relating to Staffordshire.
The letters will be auctioned at Christie's main London saleroom in St James's on June 8, when they are expected to fetch £20,000 to £30,000.
How could I not love Shelley so much, would be a better question...
Oh, and here's another pic for my collection:
Pretty Pretty lad.