Young romantics
Subtitle: The Shelleys, Byron and other tangled lives
By: Daisy Hay
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2010
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780747586272
Subjects: English Poets; Biography; English poetry; History and criticism; Romanticism
Description: Focuses on the network of writers and readers who gathered around Percy Bysshe Shelley and the campaigning journalist Leigh Hunt. They included Lord Byron, John Keats, and Mary Shelley, as well as a host of lesser-known figures: Mary Shelley's stepsister and Byron's mistress, Claire Clairmont; Hunt's botanist sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent; the musician Vincent Novello; the painters Benjamin Haydon and Joseph Severn; and writers such as Charles and Mary Lamb, Thomas Love Peacock, and William Hazlitt. They were characterized by talent, idealism, and youthful ardor, and these qualities shaped and informed their politically oppositional stances--as did their chaotic family arrangements, which often left the young women, despite their talents, facing the consequences of the men's philosophies.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.