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Elinor Wylie's Shelley Obsession
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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Elinor Wylie's closest literary kinship, which began in early childhood and lasted throughout her lifetime, developing as an obsession in her life and work, was Percy Bysshe Shelley. The best and the greater part of her prose and poetry reflect his subtle influence. Seven of her eleven essays and sketches in Fugitive Prose are a key to her sources and methods in regard to Shelley. In her four novels there is a progression of interest in the same poet: Jennifer Lorn contains a background resembling that of the Shelley family; The Venetian Glass Nephew stems from some of Shelley's thought and the philosophy of his age; The Orphan Angel brings Shelley to life again; and Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard is a composite picture of Shelley and Elinor Wylie. Of her four volumes of verse, the last two books Trivial Breath and Angels and Earthly Creatures, which contain her finest poetry, also show an increasing preoccupation with Shelley himself and with his thought. For the purposes of this paper I shall limit my study to a detailed examination of the two novels and the poems concerned directly with Shelley.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941
References
1 Nancy Hoyt, Elinor Hoyt: The Portrait of an Unknown Lady (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1935), p. 117.
2 Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, xi, xxii. 1–4.
3 Elinor Wylie, “‘Excess of Charity’,” Collected Prose (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934), p. 845.
4 Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (London: Humphrey Milford, 1931), p. 56.
5 Elinor Wylie took the name of Shiloh for Shelley from Byron, whose letter of September 10, 1820 to Hoppner reads in part. “I regret you have such a bad opinion of Shiloh... . His Islam had much poetry.” See Letters and Journals, edited by R. E. Prothero (London: John Murray, 1898), v, 73–74.
6 Cf. Trelawny's Recollections, p. 80:—“The volume of Sophocles in one pocket, and Keats's poems in the other ...”
7 7 The Orphan Angel, p. 338.
8 Collected Prose, p. 847.
9 In his “Elinor Wylie: A Portrait from Memory,” Harper's, September, 1936, Carl Van Doren tells that she spent a large share of the proceeds from The Orphan Angel for Shelley letters.
10 Loc. cit., p. 345.
11 Hogg, The Life of Shelley (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1933), i, 47.
12 Loc. cit., p. 391.
13 Alastor, 62–63.
14 Ibid., 261–262.
15 Roger Ingpen, editor, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1914), ii, 647.
16 Loc. cit., p. 457.
17 Hogg, The Life of Shelley, i, 76–77.
18 Ingpen, Letters, ii, 953.
19 Ibid., p. 701.
20 Ibid., p. 919.
21 Ibid., p. 833.
22 Op. cit., p. 83.
23 Ibid., pp. 142–143.
24 Op. cit., p. 376.
25 Op. cit., i, 118–119.
26 Ibid., p. 73.
27 Queen Mab, ix, 76–79.
28 Epipsychidion, 151–159.
29 I. “Western Wave,” from To Night, 1.
II. “Pure Anticipated Cognition,” from Letter to Leigh Hunt, June 19, 1822.
III. “Love in Desolation,” from Adonais, xxxii, 2.
IV. “Brother Lizards,” from An Exhortation, 24.
V. “Refuse the Boon,” ibid., 26.
VI. “Pastoral Garamant,” from The Witch of Atlas, xi, 2.
VII. “Wild Spirit,” from Ode to the West Wind, i, 13.
VIII. “Things That Seem Untamable,” from The Witch of Atlas, xix, 1.
IX. “The Unpastured Dragon,” from Adonais, xxvii, 4.
X. “Doubtless There is a Place of Peace,” from To Edward Williams, vi, 7.
30 Loc. cit., p. 349.
31 Letter to Maria Gisborne, 208.
32 Julian and Maddalo, 14–15.
33 Prometheus Unbound, ii, v. 68–69.
34 An Exhortation, 1.
35 Buona Notte, 1–2, 5.
36 Prometheus Unbound, i, 192–193.
37 Loc. cit., p. 517.
38 Fragment: Satan Broken Loose, 3–4.
39 Epipsychidion, 5, 397–399, 405–107.
40 Loc. cit., i.i. 262–263.
41 Loc. cit., ii.v. 103.
42 Loc. cit., p. 611.
43 To Jane: The Recollection, 87.
44 Loc. cit., p. 634.
45 Carl Van Doren, “Elinor Wylie: A Portrait from Memory,” Harper's Magazine, September, 1936.
46 Nancy Hoyt, Elinor Wylie, p. 18.
47 “Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard,” Collected Prose, p. 666.
48 Loc. cit., ii, 26.
49 Op. cit., p. 672.
50 Edward Dowden, The Life of P. B. Shelley, ii, 77.
51 Op. cit., p. 676.
52 Op. cit., ii, 629.
53 Op. cit., p. 745.
54 Op. cit., i, 122.
55 Op. cit., ii, 596.
56 Bk. i, 11, “Ere Babylon Was Dust,” from Prometheus Unbound, i, 191.
Bk. ii, 12, “Sheer O'er the Crystal Battlements,” from The Daemon of the World, i, 226.
Bk. iii, 10, “The Sage in Meditation,‘ ‘from Ode to Dejection, Written Near Naples, 111, 4.
57 “‘Excess of Charity’,” Collected Prose, p. 845.
58 William Rose Benét, The Prose and Poetry of Elinor Wylie (Norton: Wheaton College Press, 1934), p. 12.
59 Vernon Loggins, I Hear America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1937), p. 97.
60 Nancy Hoyt, Elinor Wylie, p. 18.
61 Adonais, xxxii, 1.
62 Elinor Wylie: A Portrait from Memory.
63 Isabel Paterson, preface to Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard, p. 638.
64 Op. cit.
65 Loc. cit., p. 638.
66 Op. cit., p. 668.
67 “Mr. Shelley Speaking,” Collected Prose, p. 846.
68 Shelley, Poetical Works, Oxford Edition, Notes to “Hellas,” p. 473.
69 Vernon Loggins, I Hear America, p. 90.
70 Shelley, Sonnet, p. 565, 1–3
71 Op. cit., i, 747–749.
72 Ibid., 771.
73 Op. cit., 39–41.
74 Op. cit., 174–176.
75 Op. cit., i, 380–381.
76 W. R. Benét, The Prose and Poetry of Elinor Wylie, p. 4.
77 Op. cit., v.li.3.
78 Julian and Maddalo, 204.
79 Notes to Hellas, p. 473.
80 Queen Mab, iv, 140.
81 Op. cit., ii.v. 103–110.
82 Op. cit., xxxviii, 5–7.
83 Op. cit., xxxviii, 5–7.
84 Op. cit., i.1.484–485.
85 Ibid., iv, 400–402.
86 Ibid., iii,.1.5–6.
87 Op. cit., 45–16.
88 Op. cit., ii.1.203–206.
89 Ibid., i, 302.
90 Op. cit., ii, 211–213.
91 Prometheus, iv, 552–553.
92 Ibid, iv, 394–399.