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casparb's review against another edition
3.0
A charming change of pace with this fairly vintage biography of (Percy) Shelley, written in the 20s, so I do my best to bring pinches of salt to it. It's also the very first Penguin! Ever. A lovely, though romanticised read - it's hard to deny that Maurois is at least a little in love with Percy Bysshe (a wonderful quality in a biographer), who is constantly described as appearing feminine and otherworldly, as if divine.
So there's a good deal of apologetics here! Maurois does enjoy skating over the fact of Percy Bysshe's uncanny ability to entirely ruin the life of any woman that came within six feet. There's a real disservice to Harriet Westbrook, Shelley's first wife, whom Maurois insists (despite evidence to the contrary) was unworthy of Shelley's genius. There's a genuinely bizarre failure to understand why Mary Shelley, when hosting guests, was a little perturbed by the sudden appearance of Percy, naked and dripping with seaweed. This of course comes with the description of him being 'good to look at, his slender body wet and scented with the salt of the sea'.
It's an easy read, and worth a look, though one must remember their grains of salt.
So there's a good deal of apologetics here! Maurois does enjoy skating over the fact of Percy Bysshe's uncanny ability to entirely ruin the life of any woman that came within six feet. There's a real disservice to Harriet Westbrook, Shelley's first wife, whom Maurois insists (despite evidence to the contrary) was unworthy of Shelley's genius. There's a genuinely bizarre failure to understand why Mary Shelley, when hosting guests, was a little perturbed by the sudden appearance of Percy, naked and dripping with seaweed. This of course comes with the description of him being 'good to look at, his slender body wet and scented with the salt of the sea'.
It's an easy read, and worth a look, though one must remember their grains of salt.
kikiqt's review
adventurous
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
4.0
Written in an entertaining, sometimes tongue-in-cheek manner, this biography gives the main points of the lives of Percy Shelley and the intersecting circles of his family and associates. The peculiarities and absurd behavior of these characters are told with delightful relish, and the many seperations and deaths, (most the direct result of capriciousness or folly) are treated lightly. This isn't a literary biography, as the Shelleys' writings are barely mentioned and never explored, but is rather a witty morality tale with the moral omitted.
jassmine's review against another edition
3.0
I probably had a bit too high expectations, but I just didn’t like this… I don’t regret reading this, because I still learned a lot new information, but I don’t think the author captured the spirit of Shelley’s life and work at all and… right, maybe I should start from the beginning.
The book started of great at Eaton by description of a person I never heard about (doctor Keat) and by a lovely caricature of English society. But then Shelley appears on the scene and everything goes downward – so you know, Percy Shelley: looks like a girl, is girlishly lovely, blushes like a girl, is effeminate and is clumsy and distracted like a woman… honestly, it soon started to be extremely tiring, I understand that the author tried to tell us that Shelley is slender and delicately handsome, but did we had to go through this? In the cases where Shelley isn’t a girl, he’s a child and that at least to the half-point of the book. I get that the author tried to highlight his youth and in some of the situations it was very appropriate (sixteen-year-old Harried and nineteen-years-old Percy elopes together to Scotland), but most of the times, it was just distracting…
Overall, the author’s relationship to women is highly problematic (I’m sorry I don’t have the English quotations… but no one can make me to try to find them…). And I would like to highlight that this about anything some of the character says it’s about the author’s commentary…
I also think that the whole portrait of Harriet is a bit problematic, it seems to me that Maurois tried emphasize her faults to justify Percy leaving her… Well, but I have to – a bit cynically – admit that I didn’t care that much about Harriet (she is a tragic figure and I feel sorry for all the shifted cultural portrayals of her, but…). I care much more about the sloppily done portrayal of Mary (and yes, here it is again…), I get that this isn’t Mary’s biography, but this… this was just so… crappy. Mary is portrayed here as an intelligent companion and partner, but also as a jealous stick, mother of questionable qualities and worn out housewife, which only interest is the household. The tangled story of the publication of Frankenstein is fully missing here… Mary as the author is fully missing here (there is one mention of her and her sister writing something in the same sentence and that’s it). And that was an important part of their relationship… But to be fair, Shelley as a writer is also missing for a big part. A few of his works are mentioned and we see him translating a lot, but the ties of his works to his life are fully missing. Not that I am a stan for fully autobiographical reading of books, but when you are writing a biography of an author, I think that is the aspect that would be most interesting, no? Shelley’s (not)atheism gets a big space, anarchism gets one paragraph and free love is carefully ignored and masked as love platonic… Shelley is portrayed here as a faithful husband – it’s hard to tell, from today’s point, how it truly was, but since he supported Mary in pursuing a physical relationship with Hogg (which she herself didn’t want; and this episode is conveniently missing here too…), I have my doubts about his (full) fidelity… It’s fascinating that Shelley’s life is so controversive that 200 years after his death, Maurois veils up the full extent of his opinions…
Overall, I have very mixed feelings about depictions of all of the protagonists, however there are some parts I really appreciate and which gave me an entirely new point of view on Shelley’s character. Shelley himself absolutely broke is making more debts to provide for his friends, to save Godwin’s bookshop, to pay penalties for a people he never met, to give a dowry to a poor French girl. Shelley who goes to Ireland to help the Irish revolution (and failing spectacularly…). Shelley, who becomes vegetarian, because he couldn’t bear to participate in slaughter industry. Shelley who loves to play with the children of his friends, one by one loses all of his own (the last one by his own death…). Completely calm Shelley, who can’t swim, is sitting in rickety boat at the stormy Genevan lake with crossed arms. Shelley’s corpse has in one pocket a Sophocles and in the other an open book of Keats as if only the storm made him to put down the book. Shelley, who at one side is trying to make his utopia come true is on the other side child his whole life…
Some parts of Shelley’s personality took me unawares. For some reason I didn’t expected him to have such a kind heart. He has to be unusual personality, naïve, (a bit) lunatic, eccentric, but at the same time faithful to his own moral values.
I read this book with a hope that I will get answers to some of my questions… that didn’t happen, instead I am more confused then before trying to separate what is Maurois and what is Shelley. Overall is this an easy and (kind of) interesting read, I don’t regret reading it, but I am not thrilled either.
The book started of great at Eaton by description of a person I never heard about (doctor Keat) and by a lovely caricature of English society. But then Shelley appears on the scene and everything goes downward – so you know, Percy Shelley: looks like a girl, is girlishly lovely, blushes like a girl, is effeminate and is clumsy and distracted like a woman… honestly, it soon started to be extremely tiring, I understand that the author tried to tell us that Shelley is slender and delicately handsome, but did we had to go through this? In the cases where Shelley isn’t a girl, he’s a child and that at least to the half-point of the book. I get that the author tried to highlight his youth and in some of the situations it was very appropriate (sixteen-year-old Harried and nineteen-years-old Percy elopes together to Scotland), but most of the times, it was just distracting…
Overall, the author’s relationship to women is highly problematic (I’m sorry I don’t have the English quotations… but no one can make me to try to find them…). And I would like to highlight that this about anything some of the character says it’s about the author’s commentary…
I also think that the whole portrait of Harriet is a bit problematic, it seems to me that Maurois tried emphasize her faults to justify Percy leaving her… Well, but I have to – a bit cynically – admit that I didn’t care that much about Harriet (she is a tragic figure and I feel sorry for all the shifted cultural portrayals of her, but…). I care much more about the sloppily done portrayal of Mary (and yes, here it is again…), I get that this isn’t Mary’s biography, but this… this was just so… crappy. Mary is portrayed here as an intelligent companion and partner, but also as a jealous stick, mother of questionable qualities and worn out housewife, which only interest is the household. The tangled story of the publication of Frankenstein is fully missing here… Mary as the author is fully missing here (there is one mention of her and her sister writing something in the same sentence and that’s it). And that was an important part of their relationship… But to be fair, Shelley as a writer is also missing for a big part. A few of his works are mentioned and we see him translating a lot, but the ties of his works to his life are fully missing. Not that I am a stan for fully autobiographical reading of books, but when you are writing a biography of an author, I think that is the aspect that would be most interesting, no? Shelley’s (not)atheism gets a big space, anarchism gets one paragraph and free love is carefully ignored and masked as love platonic… Shelley is portrayed here as a faithful husband – it’s hard to tell, from today’s point, how it truly was, but since he supported Mary in pursuing a physical relationship with Hogg (which she herself didn’t want; and this episode is conveniently missing here too…), I have my doubts about his (full) fidelity… It’s fascinating that Shelley’s life is so controversive that 200 years after his death, Maurois veils up the full extent of his opinions…
Overall, I have very mixed feelings about depictions of all of the protagonists, however there are some parts I really appreciate and which gave me an entirely new point of view on Shelley’s character. Shelley himself absolutely broke is making more debts to provide for his friends, to save Godwin’s bookshop, to pay penalties for a people he never met, to give a dowry to a poor French girl. Shelley who goes to Ireland to help the Irish revolution (and failing spectacularly…). Shelley, who becomes vegetarian, because he couldn’t bear to participate in slaughter industry. Shelley who loves to play with the children of his friends, one by one loses all of his own (the last one by his own death…). Completely calm Shelley, who can’t swim, is sitting in rickety boat at the stormy Genevan lake with crossed arms. Shelley’s corpse has in one pocket a Sophocles and in the other an open book of Keats as if only the storm made him to put down the book. Shelley, who at one side is trying to make his utopia come true is on the other side child his whole life…
Some parts of Shelley’s personality took me unawares. For some reason I didn’t expected him to have such a kind heart. He has to be unusual personality, naïve, (a bit) lunatic, eccentric, but at the same time faithful to his own moral values.
I read this book with a hope that I will get answers to some of my questions… that didn’t happen, instead I am more confused then before trying to separate what is Maurois and what is Shelley. Overall is this an easy and (kind of) interesting read, I don’t regret reading it, but I am not thrilled either.
lnatal's review
5.0
Free download available at Project Gutenberg
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
On a souhaité faire, en ce livre, œuvre de romancier bien plutôt que d'historien ou de critique. Sans doute les faits sont vrais et l'on ne s'est permis de prêter à Shelley ni une phrase, ni une pensée qui ne soient indiquées dans les mémoires de ses amis, dans ses lettres, dam ses poèmes; mais on s'est efforcé d'ordonner ces éléments véritables de manière à produire l'impression de découverte progressive, de croissance naturelle qui semble le propre du roman. Que le lecteur ne cherche donc id ni érudition, ni révélations, et s'il n'a pas le goût vif des éducations sentimentales, qu'il n'ouvre pas ce petit ouvrage. Ceux qui, curieux d'histoire, désireront confronter ce récit avec d'autres, trouveront à la fin du volume une liste de sources accessibles.
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
On a souhaité faire, en ce livre, œuvre de romancier bien plutôt que d'historien ou de critique. Sans doute les faits sont vrais et l'on ne s'est permis de prêter à Shelley ni une phrase, ni une pensée qui ne soient indiquées dans les mémoires de ses amis, dans ses lettres, dam ses poèmes; mais on s'est efforcé d'ordonner ces éléments véritables de manière à produire l'impression de découverte progressive, de croissance naturelle qui semble le propre du roman. Que le lecteur ne cherche donc id ni érudition, ni révélations, et s'il n'a pas le goût vif des éducations sentimentales, qu'il n'ouvre pas ce petit ouvrage. Ceux qui, curieux d'histoire, désireront confronter ce récit avec d'autres, trouveront à la fin du volume une liste de sources accessibles.
eddie's review
4.0
A delightful book; exemplary in its professional technique and craft. It's a fictionalised biography of Shelly, and is a wonderful introduction to the major events of his life.
It's getting 4 stars from me because it is such a pleasant read in contrast to Sharon Dogar's Monsters, which covers much the same ground but from Mary Shelly's perspective. Tim Martin in the Telegraph recently described Ariel as a "featherlight meringue of a book" that "would likely be mouldering at the bottom of history’s compost heap if not for its connection to the most famous bird in 20th-century literature." (Ariel was the first ever Penguin paperback). I'll take featherlight meringue over a misshapen & unwillingly trudging carthorse of a book any day.
The comparison shows how difficult it actually is to successfully translate biography into readable fiction. Ariel is featherlight, but it has pace, vivid characterisation, and packs in huge amounts of data into an all too brief 300 pages - in my 1930s hardback edition with large borders and type 150 pages fewer than Monsters.
Maurois adopts an affectionately ironic tone towards all his characters, and utilises novelistic techniques of foreshadowing effectively to raise the drama of Shelley's death. He cleverly raises the emotional temperature in the final pages by juxtaposing lyrical landscape passages with the characters' differing emotional responses (Mary and Jane bleakly bereft, silent; Byron ambivalent yet shocked; Trelawney violently grieving and demonstrative; the Italian children bystanders myth-creating) and some gory, specific detail on the decaying bodies and cremation on the beach. But everything lightly touched, not overdone.
These days we would expect to have Mary's achievements as a writer - Frankenstein came out in 1818, a few years before his death - at least name-checked. But Shelly's poetry itself is barely mentioned in the book, and none of his radical politics or influence.
It's getting 4 stars from me because it is such a pleasant read in contrast to Sharon Dogar's Monsters, which covers much the same ground but from Mary Shelly's perspective. Tim Martin in the Telegraph recently described Ariel as a "featherlight meringue of a book" that "would likely be mouldering at the bottom of history’s compost heap if not for its connection to the most famous bird in 20th-century literature." (Ariel was the first ever Penguin paperback). I'll take featherlight meringue over a misshapen & unwillingly trudging carthorse of a book any day.
The comparison shows how difficult it actually is to successfully translate biography into readable fiction. Ariel is featherlight, but it has pace, vivid characterisation, and packs in huge amounts of data into an all too brief 300 pages - in my 1930s hardback edition with large borders and type 150 pages fewer than Monsters.
Maurois adopts an affectionately ironic tone towards all his characters, and utilises novelistic techniques of foreshadowing effectively to raise the drama of Shelley's death. He cleverly raises the emotional temperature in the final pages by juxtaposing lyrical landscape passages with the characters' differing emotional responses (Mary and Jane bleakly bereft, silent; Byron ambivalent yet shocked; Trelawney violently grieving and demonstrative; the Italian children bystanders myth-creating) and some gory, specific detail on the decaying bodies and cremation on the beach. But everything lightly touched, not overdone.
These days we would expect to have Mary's achievements as a writer - Frankenstein came out in 1818, a few years before his death - at least name-checked. But Shelly's poetry itself is barely mentioned in the book, and none of his radical politics or influence.
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