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Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822
English Romantic poet
The son of an MP and destined for Parliament, Shelley was traditionally educated, first at Eton where he was mocked for his eccentricity, and then at Oxford, from which he was expelled for his radical politics.
He was a poet of extraordinary lyricism, great political hope and radical ideas, who championed democracy, dreamed of setting up a utopian commune and campaigned against religion, royalty, meat-eating and matrimony.
Nevertheless, he eloped and married 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, with whom he later had two children. The marriage failed, and he eloped again, this time with another 16-year-old, Mary Godwin, and her step-sister. Together the three of them shared an unconventional triangular relationship for more than eight years.
When Harriet drowned herself, he married Mary , and to escape creditors, they fled to Italy. There Shelley enjoyed his most prolific period, and was later joined by Lord Byron and many others.
Returning one day from a visit to Byron, a sudden summer squall overtook Shelley's boat, and along with his two companions, he drowned.
Find out more …
Percy Bysshe Shelley
http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/previctorian/shelley/shelleyov.html
Includes essays on the Romantics in general and Shelley in particular, from biographical and critical points of view.
British Association for Romantic Studies
www.bangor.ac.uk/english/bars/intro.htm
Find out about the association and access more resources through its links page.
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, edited by Iain McCalman (Oxford University Press, July 2001) £20.
Surveys the Romantic age across all aspects of British culture.
The Penguin Book of English Romantic Verse, edited by David Wright (Penguin, 1986) £7.99.
Solid collection of English Romantic verse.
Anaïs Nin 1903-77
American novelist and diarist
The daughter of a Spanish composer and a French-Danish mother, Anaïs Nin was born outside Paris and spent her early years in Europe. When she was 11, her father walked out on the family, and they moved to New York.
In 1923, Nin married the wealthy and open-minded banker Hugo Guiler, and together they returned to Paris, where they mixed with many artists, including Henry Miller with whom she began a long open affair. When war broke out, she returned with her husband to the United States, where she died in 1977.
Nin is best known for the searching, poetic and liberated exploration of sexuality in in her novels and short stories, but most significantly in her private journals. In her own lifetime, she experienced her greatest commercial success writing erotica for private clients, later collected under the title Delta of Venus. As well as Henry Miller, her lovers included Lawrence Durrell and, perhaps, her father, with whom she is rumoured to have had an incestuous adult affair.
Find out more …
Thinking of Anaïs Nin
www.anaisnin.com
US tribute site dedicated to the author and diarist.
Women in American History: Anaïs Nin
http://women.eb.com/women/articles/Nin_Anais.html
Brief but informative biography, courtesy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin (Penguin, 2000) £6.99.
Collection of short stories exploring sexuality from a female perspective.
Allen Ginsberg 1926-97
American poet
A shy boy born and brought up in New Jersey, Ginsberg left his mentally ill mother and his family to read law at Columbia University.
There he met Jack Kerouac, Leigh Carr, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady and, under their influence, began experimenting with drugs, literature and sex. He hung out with the thieves and junkies of Time Square until his arrest and imprisonment for minor misdemeanours. Ginsberg, who was gay, then began a temporary 'straight phase', during which he underwent psychoanalysis and declared himself a heterosexual.
Always a keen promoter of the work of Kerouac and Burroughs, it was not until 1955 — when he astounded the audience at a poetry reading with his long poem Howl - that he was recognised as a great writer in his own right. Both Howl and the later Kaddish (1960) were, according to the Oxford Companion to English Literature, 'long laments for an America which has disowned its own more marginalised figures (Trotskyites, Wobblies, Hell's Angels, Junkies, Queers)'.
Ginsberg was a leading author of the Beat generation, whose 'beaten' experiences on the margins of society, beatific enjoyment of life and close affiliation to the rhythms of jazz created a literary movement opposed to the conformity of post-war America.
Throughout his life, Ginsberg was also a tireless anti-establishment campaigner — most markedly against the Vietnam war and for the legalisation of cannabis and LSD and on behalf of his contemporaries Abbie Hoffman (of the Yippies) and Timothy Leary.
Find out more …
Allen Ginsberg Ashes & Blues
www.levity.com/corduroy/ginsberg/home.htm
Brief, yet comprehensive biography with links and access to an online library of his work.
Allen Ginsberg Shadow Changes into Bone
www.ginzy.com/
Comprehensive, colourful site, dedicated to all things Ginsberg.
Collected Poems 1947-1985 by Allen Ginsberg (Penguin, 1995) £20.
The collected poems of the Beat poet.