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*Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize* In late
eighteenth-century London, a group of extraordinary people gathered
around a dining table once a week. The host was Joseph Johnson,
publisher and bookseller and he was joined at dinner by a shifting
constellation of great minds including William Blake, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Henry Fuseli, Anna Barbauld and Mary
Wollstonecraft. Johnson's years as a maker of books saw profound
change in Britain and abroad. In this remarkable portrait of a
revolutionary age, Daisy Hay captures a changing nation through the
stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose
ideas still influence us today. 'Rich in period and personal
detail' Guardian 'Hugely engrossing' Sunday Times
'Invention ... does not consist in creating out of void, but out of
chaos' - Mary Shelley In the 200 years since its first publication,
the story of Frankenstein's creation during stormy days and nights
at Byron's Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva has become literary legend.
In this book, Daisy Hay returns to the objects and manuscripts of
the novel's genesis in order to assemble its story anew.
Frankenstein was inspired by the extraordinary people surrounding
the eighteen-year-old author and by the places and historical
dramas that formed the backdrop of her youth. Featuring
manuscripts, portraits, illustrations and artefacts, The Making of
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein explores the novel's time and place,
its people, the relics of its long afterlife and the notebooks in
which it was created. Hay strips Frankenstein back to its
constituent parts revealing an uneven novel written by a young
woman deeply engaged in the process of working out what she thought
about the pressing issues of her time: science, politics, religion,
slavery, maternity, the imagination, creativity and community. This
is a compelling and innovative biography of the novel for all those
fascinated by its essential, brilliant chaos.
'A most impressive achievement' Michael Holroyd 'Enthralling'
Sunday Times 'Masterly' Telegraph _______________________ 'The web
of our Life is of mingled Yarn' - John Keats In Young Romantics
Daisy Hay shatters the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary,
introspective genius, telling the story of the communal existence
of an astonishingly youthful circle. The fiery, generous spirit of
Leigh Hunt, radical journalist and editor of The Examiner, took
centre stage. He bound together the restless Shelley and his
brilliant wife Mary, author of Frankenstein; Mary's feisty
step-sister Claire Clairmont, who became Byron's lover and the
mother of his child; and Hunt's charismatic sister-in-law Elizabeth
Kent. With authority, sparkling prose and constant insight Daisy
Hay describes their travels in France, Switzerland and Italy, their
artistic triumphs, their headstrong ways, their grievous losses and
their devastating tragedies. Young Romantics explores the history
of the group, from its inception in Leigh Hunt's prison cell in
1813 to its ultimate disintegration in the years following 1822. It
encompasses tales of love, betrayal, sacrifice and friendship, all
of which were played out against a background of political
turbulence and intense literary creativity. This smouldering
turmoil of strained relationships and insular friendships would
ferment to inspire the drama of Frankenstein, the heady idealism of
Shelley's poetry, and Byron's own self-loathing, self-loving public
persona. Above all the characters are rendered on the page with
marvellous vitality, and this is a gloriously entrancing and
revelatory read, the debut of a young biographer of the highest
calibre and enormous promise.
"Young Romantics" tells the story of the interlinked lives of
the young English Romantic poets from an entirely fresh
perspective--celebrating their extreme youth and outsize yearning
for friendship as well as their individuality and political
radicalism. The book 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 fascinating 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. "In firm, clear,
often elegant prose, Daisy Hay] narrates the main events in the
lives of her subjects from 1813, when they began to coalesce around
Hunt in London, till 1822" (Ben Downing, "The New York Times Book
Review").
"Young Romantics" is an enthralling tale of love, betrayal,
sacrifice, and friendship played out against a backdrop of
political turbulence and intense literary creativity. "Hay's
account of the passionate and messy lives of her Romantics is
vivid, picturesque, and finely told" (Richard Eder, "The Boston
Globe").
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