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Unit 14: Ode to the West Wind by PB Shelley

(ostensibly burlesque but quite subversive), Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, with Notes
Thomas Jefferson Hogg.
In 1811, Shelley published his second Gothic novel, St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, and a pamphlet
called The Necessity of Atheism. This latter gained the attention of the university administration
and he was called to appear before the College’s fellows, including the Dean, George Rowley.
His refusal to repudiate the authorship of the pamphlet resulted in his being expelled from
Oxford on 25 March 1811, along with Hogg. The rediscovery in mid-2006 of Shelley’s long-lost
“Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things”—a long, strident anti-monarchical and anti-
war poem printed in 1811 in London by Crosby and Company as “by a gentleman of the
University of Oxford”—gives a new dimension to the expulsion, reinforcing Hogg’s implication
of political motives (“an affair of party”). Shelley was given the choice to be reinstated after
his father intervened, on the condition that he would have to recant his avowed views. His
refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.

Marriage

Four months after being expelled, on 28 August 1811, the 19-year-old Shelley eloped to Scotland
with the 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, a pupil at the same boarding school where Shelley’s
sisters were pupils. Shelley’s father had forbidden him to see that girl. Harriet Westbrook had
been writing Shelley passionate letters threatening to kill herself because of her unhappiness
at the school and at home. Shelley, heartbroken after the failure of his romance with his
cousin, Harriet Grove, cut off from his mother and sisters, and convinced he had not long to
live, impulsively decided to rescue Harriet Westbrook and make her his beneficiary. Harriet
Westbrook’s 28-year-old sister Eliza, to whom Harriet was very close, appears to have encouraged
the young girl’s infatuation with the future baronet. The Westbrooks pretended to disapprove
but secretly encouraged the elopement. Sir Timothy Shelley, however, outraged that his son
had married beneath him (Harriet’s father, though prosperous, had kept a tavern) revoked
Shelley’s allowance and refused ever to receive the couple at Field Place. Shelley invited his
friend Hogg to share his ménage but asked him to leave when Hogg made advances to
Harriet. Harriet also insisted that her sister Eliza, whom Shelley detested, live with them.
Shelley was also at this time increasingly involved in an intense platonic relationship with
Elizabeth Hitchener, a 28-year-old unmarried schoolteacher of advanced views, with whom he
had been corresponding. Hitchener, whom Shelley called the “sister of my soul” and “my
second self”, became his muse and confidante in the writing of his philosophical poem Queen
Mab, a Utopian allegory.

During this period, Shelley travelled to Keswick in England’s Lake District, where he visited
the poet Robert Southey, under the mistaken impression that Southey was still a political
radical. Southey, who had himself been expelled from the Westminster School for opposing
flogging, was taken with Shelley and predicted great things for him as a poet. He also informed
Shelley that William Godwin, author of Political Justice, which had greatly influenced him in
his youth, and which Shelley also admired, was still alive. Shelley wrote to Godwin, offering
himself as his devoted disciple and informing Godwin that he was “the son of a man of
fortune in Sussex” and “heir by entail to an estate of 6,000 £ per an.” Godwin, who supported
a large family and was chronically penniless, immediately saw in Shelley a source of his
financial salvation. He wrote asking for more particulars about Shelley’s income and began
advising him to reconcile with Sir Timothy. Meanwhile, Sir Timothy’s patron, the Duke of
Norfolk, a former Catholic who favoured Catholic Emancipation, was also vainly trying to
reconcile Sir Timothy and his son, whose political career the Duke wished to encourage. A
maternal uncle ultimately supplied money to pay Shelley’s debts, but Shelley’s relationship
with the Duke may have influenced his decision to travel to Ireland. In Dublin Shelley published

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