since yesterday was mary shelley's birthday, as promised, here is a thread of my favorite facts and anecdotes about her weird, chaotic, and often despicable husband, percy bysshe shelley

shelley was the son of a baronet, the lowest of the landed nobles, and was educated at eton & then oxford. at eton he was brutally bullied & tormented almost daily, in events that became known as "shelley-baitings."

he was mischievous and pulled pranks, once blowing up a tree on eton's south meadow with gunpowder, but despite his best efforts, he left eton without making a single friend.

at oxford, he had a reputation for rarely attending classes, preferring to read in his room, up to 16 hours a day. his closest friend was thomas jefferson hogg. my absolute favorite anecdote about shelley is from hogg:

TL;DR: shelley & hogg had been reading plato for hours & when they left they came upon a woman & her baby. shelley accosted the woman, seized her baby, & demanded to know whether he remembered "preexistence." upon being told the baby couldn't talk, shelley was distraught.

shelley and hogg were eventually expelled for publishing pamphlets on "the necessity of atheism." after oxford, shelley eloped with a 16-year-old girl named harriet, who later gave birth to a daughter named ianthe.

not long after, shelley moved to london to become a student of the political radical, william godwin. this was where he first met godwin's daughter, mary. they fell in love and ran away to switzerland together, leaving behind shelley's daughter and pregnant wife.

when they returned, godwin was furious with them both, and shelley and mary lived apart for some time. shelley was livid that godwin was so cruel to his daughter and that so many of his previous "allies" and financial contacts had hung him out to dry:

at this point, shelley was broke. as i said in my thread about mary, shelley taught her latin and ancient greek, and they oftedn used ancient greek as a 'code' in their letters. translation of the below, in his letter to mary: "i don't have much money."

he hated living apart from mary, and, in case you're noticing a theme, he was VERY dramatic in his revenge fantasies - quick #authortip for my fellow debuts, if you want to be on good terms with your publisher, do not talk about how you want to "wither up [their] soul piecemeal."

shelley often expressed sentiments of self-loathing and he seemed, in certain moments, to consider himself fundamentally "bad" and impure, redeemed only by mary's affection:

he greatly admired mary's intellect (and how that intellect reflected well upon him as her partner):

he contrasted his feelings for mary with his feelings for his wife, harriet, stating that he considered mary to be his intellectual equal and the person who might "redeem" him

another theme from shelley's letters is him begging people to loan him money:

shelley was estranged from his family and his father had cut him off financially after he was expelled from oxford (and him just generally being a fuck up) but that didn't stop shelley from asking for money from him, too

shelley's early literary career was not a huge success. discussing the publication of "queen mab" with his publisher, shelley wrote (very relatably):

one more iconic story about shelley is how he was, allegedly, almost murdered by a random farmer:

this is an explanation of the supposed event, though to this day it's not clear whether this actually happened or if this was an invented story that shelley told to rebuff his creditors

shelley had a sense of humor and often demonstrated self-awareness--such as when he tried to endear himself to mary's half-sister, fanny (aka, the 19th century equivalent of "c'mon, i don't bite):

shelley actually was a vegetarian, and apparently subsisted on a sad diet of bread and wine. he was thin, sickly, and a hypochondriac (if he saw someone on the street with a certain illness or affliction, for weeks he was plagued by nightmares wherein he caught the same illness).

as odysseus, he was a man of many contradictions. while he professed a philosophy of radical feminism, he treated the actual women in his life with immense cruelty.

he abandoned his first wife (she later committed suicide; he lost custody of their children) and cheated on mary throughout the entirety of their relationship, even while she suffered from miscarriages and the grief of their childrens' deaths

while he was essentially a proto-Socialist and espoused workers’ rights, he often forgot to tip drivers, or left inns and boarding houses without paying.

most shelley scholars believe that he suffered from a myriad of mental illnesses, and possibly a personality disorder. below is an excerpt from one of hogg's letters about him:

it's clear that he struggled enormously with socializing and often missed social cues. while he had radical political beliefs, he had difficulty empathizing with the actual people around him.

he became extremely distressed if his strict routine was disrupted, and he was intensely preoccupied with thoughts of illness, injury, or death.

to shelley, the world was a dangerous, sickly place that was always at risk of "infecting" him or otherwise harming him. while he rarely expressed remorse for his specific actions, he was sometimes overcome with despair at his own inherent "badness" or vice.

i'm of course not qualified to make any definitive statement, but i suspect he suffered from OCD. he was a complex person who showed remarkably poor judgment and frequent cruelty, but it's also clear he was a victim of his own mind.

to end: i can't say that i am, personally, much of a fan of his work OR his character, but "ozymandias" does slap: