In recent years, under pressure from New Historicism and developments in the formal study of biography, scholars have become increasingly conscious of how deliberately fashioned were the images of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth. In Byron's case, this was often with his consent or collusion; in Shelley's case, it was the active efforts of his widow and friends who struggled to construct a particular picture of both man and poet. With Wordsworth the picture is less clear, since the kind of scrutiny that his two counterparts have recently received has rarely extended to him. The memoirs in this collection are written by those who had personal knowledge of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, or who claimed to be recording the accounts of those who had such knowledge. Each volume in this set contains the original memoirs in facsimile together with introductions and headnotes. The headnotes set the relevant context for each document, cross-referencing controversial passages.
In recent years, under pressure from New Historicism and developments in the formal study of biography, scholars have become increasingly conscious of how deliberately fashioned were the images of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth. In Byron's case, this was often with his consent or collusion; in Shelley's case, it was the active efforts of his widow and friends who struggled to construct a particular picture of both man and poet. With Wordsworth the picture is less clear, since the kind of scrutiny that his two counterparts have recently received has rarely extended to him. The memoirs in this collection are written by those who had personal knowledge of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, or who claimed to be recording the accounts of those who had such knowledge. Each volume in this set contains the original memoirs in facsimile together with introductions and headnotes. The headnotes set the relevant context for each document, cross-referencing controversial passages.
Volume 1 Percy Bysshe Shelley Including extracts from: Polidori, The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori (1816); William Hazlitt, On Paradox and Common-place (1821); Mary Shelley, Preface to Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824); Thomas Medwin, Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824); T J Hogg 'Shelley at Oxford' (1832-3); Thomas Medwin, The Shelley Papers (1833); Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (1828); Mary Shelley, Preface and notes from Shelley's Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments (1840), including extracts from Edward Williams's Journal (1821-22); Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847); J Dix, Pen and Ink Sketches of Pets, Preachers and Politicians (1846); T J Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1858); Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt (1850); Thomas Love Peacock, 'Memories of Shelley' (1860-2); Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858); Lady Jane Shelley, Shelley Memorials: from Authentic Sources (1859); Thornton Hunt, 'Shelley. By One Who Knew Him' (1863) Volume 2 Lord Byron Including extracts from: Sir Walter Scott, 'Character of Lord Byron' (1824); John Galt, The Life of Lord Byron (1830); Thomas Moore, The Life of Byron (1832); Robert Dallas, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron (1824); John Cam Hobhouse, Recollections of a Long Life (1909); Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries (1828); Thomas Medwin, Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824); Teresa Guiccioli, My Recollections of Lord Byron (1869); James Kennedy, Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron (1830); Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858) Volume 3 William Wordsworth Including extracts from: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817); John Wilson ('Philip Kempferhausen'), 'Letters from the Lakes' (1819); William Hazlitt, 'My First Acquaintance with Poets' (1823); William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (1825); Anon., Galignani Edition, 'Memoir of William Wordsworth Esq.' (1828); T.Q.M., 'Notes on a Tour from Skipton to Keswick' (1828); Orville Dewey, The Old World and the New (1836); Henry F Chorley, Memorials of Mrs Hemans (1836); Joseph Cottle, Early Recollections (1837); Thomas DeQuincey, 'Lake Reminiscences from 1807 to 1830' (1839); Thomas De Quincey, 'Sketches of Life and Manners' (1840); Barron Field, Memoirs of the Life and Poetry of William Wordsworth (1839, 1846); James Henry Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt (1850); Robert Pearse Gillies, Memoirs of a Literary Veteran (1851); Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of William Wordsworth (1851); Benjamin Robert Haydon, Life, from his Autobiography and Journals (1853); Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (1856); Edwin Paxton Hood, William Wordsworth; A Biography (1856); Thomas Moore, Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence (1853-6); John Davy, The Angler in the Lake District (1857); Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858); Thomas Colley Grattan, Beaten Paths; and Those Who Trod Them (1862); William Jerdan, Men I Have Known (1862); Robert Perceval Graves, 'Recollectionns of Wordsworth and the Lake Country' (1869); Henry Crabb Robinson, Reminiscences and Correspondence (1869); Julian Charles Young, A Memoir of Charles Mayne Young (1871); Thomas Cooper, The Life of Thomas Cooper: Written by Himself (1872); Sara Coleridge, Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge (1873); Eliza Fletcher, Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher (1875); Harriet Martineau, Autobiography (1877); Samuel Rowles Pattison (ed.), The Brothers Wiffen (1880); Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences (1881); Caroline Fox, Memories of Old Friends (1882); Hardwicke Drumond Rawnsley, 'Reminiscences of Wordsworth among the Peasantry of Westmoreland' (1882); Alaric Alfred Watts, Alaric Watts. A Narrative of His Life (1884); Henry Taylor, Autoboigraphy of Henry Taylor 1800-1875 (1885); Aubrey De Vere, Essays, Chiefly on Poetry (1887); Ellis Yarnall, Wordsworth and the Coleridges (1899)
'Mullan has performed a signal service to students of Shelley by assembling in one volume generous extracts in facsimile from the many nineteenth-century attempts to fix the poet - or a version of him - in the public imagination.' - John Haydn Baker, The Times Literary Supplement 'It is very convenient to have such a range of memoirs (some familiar and readily available, others obscure and hard to find) brought together thus in a single resource, and this series will no doubt be welcome to scholar and browser alike. Each volume, under the general editorship of John Mullan, comes complete with portrait, introduction, Bibliography, Chronology, and a list of copy texts, together with judicious prefatory remarks to each item and helpful annotations.' - Greg Crossan, Notes and Queries 'In sum, then, this is a deeply absorbing collection. It affords many of the pleasures and insights of traditional literary biography, but it also encourages one to reflect critically upon the biographical project itself.' - Gregory Dart, British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin '... here indeed are unfamiliar things, and this volume would add richness to most doctoral students' early forays into Wordsworthian biography. Even for the readers of the Byron Journal, this is where to start truffle hunting.' - Drummond Bone, The Byron Journal '... introductory essays provide useful ways into the texts for inclusion, and as a whole the collection provides a valuable resource for students and scholars, especially enabling to an engagement with biography informed by the historical contexts within which these powerful personae were constructed. In this way the collection looks like a fruitful teaching text as it offers an opportunity for students to engage with tempting biographical matter without naivete, and a way in to an analysis of the development of "Romanticism" and its ideology. The decision to reproduce in facsimile ... intensifies the sense of historicity and gives an engagingly archival feel to the collection.' - Years Works in English Studies 'As a whole, this set proves to be a useful collection of memoirs and recollections for students and scholars alike. Because it is to be expected that most readers would not easily have access to most of the books from which these extracts are taken, one can only welcome the sudden availability of these materials in facsimile for the first time... This edition offers a much-needed re-appraisal of the nineteenth-century reception of these three poets and their biographers.' - Michael Laplace-Sinatra, Romanticism on the Net
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