Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (67 page)

I am also indebted to those who have undertaken the Herculean task of editing Romantic letters and diaries. I particularly wish to acknowledge Betty T. Bennett’s volumes of Mary Shelley’s letters; Marion Kingston Stocking’s editions of Claire Clairmont’s letters and diaries; and the Pforzheimer Collection’s
Shelley and his Circle
volumes, edited by Kenneth Neill Cameron, Donald Reiman, Doucet Fischer and others. I am most grateful to Timothy Webb, who shared with me some of the findings relating to his forthcoming edition of Leigh Hunt’s
Autobiography
and to David Cheney, whose work on a complete edition of Hunt’s correspondence ceased only with his death. I have made substantial use of Dr Cheney’s typescript and thank the University of Toledo for allowing me access to his papers, and his widow, Pat Cheney, for making me welcome during my visit to Ohio.

Throughout my research on the Shelleys and the Hunts I have been fortunate to be able to draw on the support and advice of many individuals. In Cambridge Leo Mellor, Raphael Lyne and Heather Glen have provided much encouragement, and I am very grateful to the President and Fellows of New Hall for awarding me a Bye-Fellowship to support my work. I am also grateful to Nigel Leask, who supervised my doctoral thesis on literary collaboration in the Shelley circle. My agent, Clare Alexander, has been a wonderful advocate and a source of much wisdom, and Michael Fishwick at Bloomsbury and Paul Elie at Farrar, Straus and Giroux have been generous and incisive editors. It has been a pleasure to work with Margaret Stead, who copy-edited the book, and Anna Simpson, who saw it through production.

For help with particular questions I would like to thank Bruce Barker-Benfield, Peter Cochran, Nicholas Roe, Michael Rossington, William St Clair and Heather Tilley. I would also like to record my gratitude to the late Marion Kingston Stocking, who answered several questions about the papers of Claire Clairmont, and to Candia McWilliam, who very kindly scrutinsed a set of proofs. In archives and libraries I have been aided by Sid Huttner, Nana Diederichs, Kathy Flynn, Isaac Gewirtz, Elizabeth Denlinger and Charles Carter, as well as by the staff of the Brotherton Collection, Leeds, the British Library, the London Library, the Bodleian Library, and Cambridge University Library. I owe special thanks to Paul Howard, for his translations of the manuscript letters of Alexander Mavrocordato, and to Barbara Floyd and Sandra Rice, for the warm welcome they extended to me during my stint at the University of Toledo’s Canaday Centre. Jessie and Johnny Saunders, Jane Deuser, and Liz and Matthew Edwards were all wonderfully hospitable during my travels to archives in Britain and the United States. Doucet Fischer has guided me at every stage as I have attempted to unravel the complexities of the Pforzheimer Collection manuscripts, and has done so with unflagging wit and good humour. Above all I am indebted to Nora Crook, who has read the book in draft, saved me from my own inaccuracies on numerous occasions, and who, over the past few years, has generously revealed to me the fathomless depths of her knowledge of all things Shelleyan. All mistakes are, of course, my own.

I could not have written this book without the support of my friends and my family, and am very grateful to them all for listening. In particular, I thank Polly Mackenzie and Aoife Ní Luanaigh for their advice; my sister, Marianna Hay, for her support; and my father, Michael Hay, for his unwavering faith in my abilities and for much quiet good sense along the way. I have discussed this book at every stage of its development with my mother, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, and feel exceptionally fortunate to have been able to draw on her expertise as I have put my narrative together. Most of all, I would like to thank my husband, Matthew Santer, who has lived with the Romantics for as long as he has lived with me. He has accompanied me on fact-finding missions in England and Italy, has read drafts and been the source of many sensible suggestions and, on one notable occasion, sat beside me in an archive in Salem, Massachusetts, searching near-illegible nineteenth-century notebooks for references to Shelley, as we raced the clock towards closing time. I cannot thank him enough for his support.

For permission to quote from manuscript material, I am grateful to the following institutions: the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.; the Luther Brewer Leigh Hunt Collection at the University of Iowa; and, at the New York Public Library, the Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and his Circle and the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the London Library Trust, provided through the award of Carlyle Membership of the library.

First published in Great Britain 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Daisy Hay

This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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