Shelley: The Pursuit (New York Review Books)

Wonderful biography of Shelley…very well researched and presented!

I love a long book, and boy does this one qualify! It is very well written, I have nothing negative to say about the literary quality. But please, hear me, if you love long, long paragraphs of maddeningly detailed descriptions of just about every inch of Europe, this the book for you. I assumed there’d be some dissection and analysis of the Shelley poems, but I didn’t expect page after page of it. I was hoping to learn more about Mary and Claire also, but I felt like they were just extras in a movie about Percy. I do not dislike this book, I do not disparage the quality of the writing, I just want to warn you that you better be ready to focus intently on every brick in every building in every country surrounding Great Britain or you might end up like I did - skipping page after page til I saw the name Mary before I’d fall back in and see how the other lives were going. I am not one of those reviewers who dislike a biography because I end up not liking the subject, this review is about the writing style of the author only. But I have to say, for no good reason, that I did not like Percy Shelley and feel mountains of pity for the unsuspecting females and innocent children who had the misfortune of crossing paths with him.

Holmes quotes extensively from the surviving letters and journals of Shelley's family and friends, drawing a portrait of Shelley as his contemporaries viewed him. I especially appreciated the lengthy quotes from Shelley's poetry and the commentary on both his prose and his poems, because it spared me from the trouble of reading it all for myself, as I am more fascinated by Shelley the man, a proto-Marxist and proto-hippie who got himself entangled in endless financial and emotional problems. I liked Holmes' even-handed approach; when Shelley is dishonest, self-serving and selfish, he says so, but he also gives him credit where credit is due. His descriptions of Europe and especially Italy helped conjure up the world that the Shelleys lived in, as well as his explanations of the politics and social milieu of England at that time, for example, government censorship of the press and the reasons why Shelley was a social pariah in his lifetime.

"Shelley: The Pursuit" by Richard Holmes is one of the best biographies I have ever come across. While often overly critical of Shelly--and often for good reason--Holmes recaptures the poet's personality and offers insight into his works. Holmes is often at his best with some of the more minor poems, offering new insight for readers familiar with Shelley's poems. Some of the best parts of this book involve Shelley's circle. Holmes offers a fresh take on how Byron, Leigh Hunt, Keats and many others influenced and were shaped in term by Shelley. Often shattering myths about Shelley's personal life, Holmes offers excellent portraits of the women in Shelley's life--and this reader gained new appreciation of both Mary Shelley and, especially, Claire Clairmont. There are problems to be sure such as the photos are simply not up to par with the rest of the book. But these are minor quibbles. This is a great biography from one of the best writers in the genre. Highly recommended.

Finest bio of Shelley I’ve ever read.

AMAZING biography. This book brings to light the true nature of Percy Shelley. As someone who loves the poet deeply, it was refreshing to come across an author who didn't downplay his conflicting characteristics or his mental instability. The author was sure to use people who actually knew Shelley as sources, and made it known when something was heavily debated. He often gave both sides of an issue. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys learning about Percy Shelley. The only downside is this book is a commitment, as it is very long.

...a quarter century after the first. Shelley is the brilliant radical and determined moralist who produced some of the most haunting poems of the age of revolutions. Of course, great accomplishments and great harm go together with such characters. His excessive ideas of freedom, as is common, led to irresponsibility, abandonment, and erratic behavior at a suicidal level. This is the definitive biography of an indispensable poet.

Shelly:The Pursuit. By Richard HolmesAlthough I appreciate the incredible details of this book, I could not get past the first hundred pages. Clearly Mr. Holmes "knows" his subject in that he has done exhaustive research. But it seems that he really dislikes Shelley, so I was puzzled as to why he would even bother to spend so much of his life with him. I tired of Mr. Holmes constantly driving the point home that Shelley was crazy and spoiled. He was also one of the most amazing characters to come out of the 19th century, a visionary, a political activist who sacrificed all creature comforts to pursue his egalitarian ideals and, of course, he was one of the most gifted poets I've ever read. None of this comes across in this book. Mr. Holmes seems determined, over and over again, to portray Shelley as nothing more than a spoied brat. His very real convictions come across has tantrums. Mr. Holmes will typically throw out phrases like "this is one of Shelley's typically overblown poems", without stopping to anaylize what he means. A very disapppointing, one-sided view of a great man.

One of the most extraordinary biographies I have ever read, and probably the most passionate.I have long been a lover of the romantic poets, especially Keats and Byron, but had never been particularly attracted to Shelley's poetry. Nevertheless I was intrigued by the little I knew of him as a person, and piques by my ignorance, I purchased this book.Holmes, at the age of 29, also the age of Shelley's death, has written a book based on voluminous research, intimate knowledge of the localities he writes about, especially in Italy, and reveals widespread reading of those authors and texts important to Shelley, who read widely in the classics and philosophy, and who was a thinker and philosopher and indeed often a politician as much as a poet.Published in 1974, a very different time to the present, Holmes embraces the millenial aspirations of the Romantic era, echoed in many ways by the sixties and seventies. I found his book in some ways a companion piece to Edward Thompson's, 'The Making of the English Working Class,' a book which Holmes several times heaps praise upon, because like Thompson Holmes goes to enormous trouble to research the context of Shelley's hugely spirited political work, conducted over a period of years while he lived as a very young man in Britain.Holmes is fascinating on the subject of Shelley's relationship with his family of birth, and in particular his rancorous feud with his father over his inheritance which lasted almost for the rest of his life. Shelley was an immensely strong personality with wildly unconventional views which he never lost but merely tweaked from time to time. He believed and to some extent practised free love, to an extent still not wholly clear because of the destruction of evidence by those close to him after his death, throughout his life. He also violently condemned as did William Blake the repressive British government of the time.Holmes is equally fascinating on the details of Shelley's relationships with women and also male friends. He first married Harriet Westbrook and almost throughout the marriage lived with her and her sister Eliza. He left her to live with Mary Godwin, daughter of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and spent the rest of his life living with Mary but very close to her half sister Clair, and at various times a number of other women.Most fascinating of all, in the last few years of his life, is the relationship with Byron. Byron's much greater wealth, and the elegance of his lifestyle and poetry in the end exhausted Shelley, but he was not overwhelmed, and the story of these two giant personalities is a task Holmes attacks with brio.Shelley was a force of nature, but he was also - when he wanted to be, which was not always - a master of tact and diplomacy. His torrents of invective on matters personal and political were frequent, but tailored to the prevailing wind. No wonder in his last years he came to love sailing, too much to save his life.As I read this book I dipped into the poetry previously almost enitrely unknown to me, and for the record my favourite pieces are 'Julian and Maddolo,' and 'The Cenci,' because for me Shelley the poet is at his best as a storyteller, not as a pedagogue.Thankyou Mr Holmes.

Not only was Shelley a stunning human being, a forward-looking thinker and poet of renown, he was also very brave. Sent down from Oxford university and banished by his family for publicly denouncing Christianity, criticising the monarchy, and expounding free love for men and women, he also put out leaflets to support working men and encouraged unrest and demands for better working conditions, pay, and leisure. When some men were executed for these demands, he set up schemes to support their families. To avoid his own arrest, he escaped abroad from the age of 22 and although always in debt, took with him Mary Shelley when she was just 16 years old and her step sister, Claire. The three travelled round Europe together in a 'platonic' ménage-a-tois while Shelley wrote his poetic masterpieces. Shelley was just 29 years old when he drowned in a storm crossing the Gulf of Spezia. Letters and journals detail almost every day of Shelley's life which include his friendships with Byron and other leading thinkers and poets of the day but 733 pages require dedicated reading! Freak OutFreak Out

I've still got about 200 pages to read but what an amazing experience, I don't want it to end. Shelley, The Pursuit has had me gripped for the last 3 weeks, every day looking forward to the next hour I can indulge myself with this fabulous book. It's not a short read at over 700 pages but so, so worth it. A book to totally immerse oneself in, even though you know the ending. Thoroughly researched, Holmes totallygets under the skin of Shelley, at times passionate, loving, politically challenging and admirably vociferous in his views, yet oddly misjudging of others feelings. I also have to keep reminding myself how young all the main characters are and what they achieved both in their private and professional lives so early on. The Pursuit is also very apt title, one has the constant impression of movement throughout Shelley's life, it's literally as though he cannot remain in one place, and the boom it often reeds as a travel journey of Italy, this only adds to its attraction. Highly, highly recommended. I feel a trip to Italy coming on...

Perhaps four stars is less than this blockbusting biography of Shelley deserves but compared to Holme's later work four is about right. At seven hundred and thirty pages this is a long read and yet there are elements that could have been expanded such as the treatment of Harriet westbrook the badly treated first wife and the nature of Shelley's difficulties with Byron. However the last chapter leading to the drowning in the gulf of spezia is full of pathos and reads like the climax to a novel leaving the reader wanting more. Shelley is an enigmatic creature: a strange mix of generosity and courage, blended with a selfish petulant egotism. His early political output reminds one of the French revolutionary St Just in it's self righteous bombast. it is difficult to fully like the Shelley that Holmes gives us but when the book ends we miss him and I think this is due to the way in which the life story and the poetry are blended. This is not easy to do but here the context of the poetic analysis is excellent and the verse serves to drive on and illuminate the life. Holmes is always readable and although I prefer the essay length that he uses in "Footsteps" this is a very enjoyable and enlightening read.One of the great skills of a biographer, particularly the biographer of poets is to capture the atmospherics of the verse and to quote a letter Shelly sent to Peacock Holmes makes " The leaves of Autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind as it were like the step of ghosts."

When ordering this keep in mind that it is printed in a minuscule font and on cheap paper.