On this day...

Percy Shelley's first wife Harriet Westbrook killed herself in 1816, at the age of 21. Five years earlier, Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner, had eloped with a 19-year-old Shelley to Scotland to get married, but any happiness was short-lived. Before three years were out, Shelley had abandoned pregnant Westbrook and their young child to begin an affair with Mary Godwin, who would later become his second wife.

Distraught by her loss, Westbrook committed suicide, drowning herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, leaving a suicide note addressed to her sister and Shelley. In it she expressed her traumatised mental state:'I could never be anything but a source of vexation and misery to you all.... too wretched to exert myself, lowered in the opinion of everyone, why should I drag on a miserable existence?...I never could refuse you and if you had never left me I might have lived, but as it is I freely forgive you and may you enjoy that happiness which you have deprived me of'.

On this day...

Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley died in 1822, at the age of 29. Born to a Whig Member of Parliament, Shelley's early childhood was one of contentment and reasonable prosperity, as he received primary education and engaged in such activities as fishing and hunting. Although his literary works show a blossoming and sharp intellect, such rigour was seemingly lacking from his education, as his performances at boh Oxford and Eton fell short of desired results. His first work was gohic novel, 'Zastrozzi',  a genre that was to be much progressed by future wife Mary and her 'Frankenstein'.

However, it was 16-year-old Henrietta Westbrook with whom Shelley eloped in 1811, moving their household to the Lake District for writing. However, three years and a child later, Shelley grew steadily more unhapy in his marriage, falling in love with another 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. and the two eloped to Switzerland. Perhaps best depicted as the 19th century's version of a Hollywood golden couple, the two famously took part in a meeting with Byron at Lake Geneva, after which followed a period of some of their best works, including  'To a Skylark', 'Adonais' and 'A Defence of Poetry'. Also a close friend to John Keats, it is said that when Shelley's body was found, after he had drowned, a book of Keats' poetry was discovered in his pocket.

On this day...

A gathering of literary significance took place at Lake Geneva in 1816. Lord Byron, together with his pregnant mistress Claire Clairmont and physician John William Polidori, met with 'another family of very suspicious appearance' - the Shelleys, Percy, wife-to-be Mary, and their young son William. The group congregated at the Villa Diodati, once inhabited by John Milton, which was described by Percy as 'a menagerie, with eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were masters of it'.

Aside from being merely a voyeuristic exercise into some of the most remarkable literary minds of the day, interest in this meeting stems from the work it produced, with Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' conceived during a round of late night ghost stories. The work, to be published the next year, is now widely considered a forerunner to modern science-fiction, and remains popular with the readership and Hollywood audiences alike. Several years later, Shelley remembered the summer stay as the time 'when I first stepped out from childhood into life'.

Six Nations of literature...

With the Six Nations kicking off today, it seemed an apt opportunity to take a look at the literature produced by these countries, which is some of the best in the world.

Italy - Starting with the Latin writings of Ovid and Tacitus, Italian literature spans an enormous period and is considered some of the finest. Continuing with Dante and his 'Inferno' in the Middle Ages and the sonnets of Petrach, modern Italian literature still remains in the form of the the late Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco.

France - Dumas, Flaubert, Zola, Proust; the list is endless. More so than other national literature, the French canon contains numerous philosophical works, the products of Camus, Jean Paul Sartre and Jean-Jacques Rosseau. Drama exists in the shape of Moliere, and France expressed an important voice in Roland Barthes.

Ireland - Irish literature really found its feet in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bursting forth with the dual force of playwrights Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, Ireland's literary claim was strengthened through the poetry of Yeats and Goldsmith and its place cemented with the prose works of Joyce.

Wales - Although probably for many, the most famous Welsh writer is poet Dylan Thomas, the literature of Wales is far more diverse. No more so for the strength of works written in its own language, by authors such as William Owen Roberts. Many English writers such as Manley Hopkins have used Welsh subject matter.

Scotland - Scotland's most recent wave of literary tradition came in the Romantic era under the eye of Robert Burns and Walter Scott. Yet it was the Victorian era which propelled it into public eye, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and J.M. Barrie all becoming household names; Duffy now being the latest.

England - Possibly one of the richest literary histories, all that can be said for England is a list of names. The playwrights; Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson. The poets; Milton, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Tennyson. The novelists: Hardy, Austen, the Brontes, Woolf, Dickens, Forster, Eliot and most recently, Rowling.

So there you have it. Competitors on and off the rugby field. Tradition not only in sport but in literature. Long may it continue...

You and me could write a Bad Romance...

On a similar theme, the Guardian and Observer this week are launching a series about the Romantic poets. From tomorrow, each day the paper will include a booklet about an influential poet of the era, including Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth. The booklets will contain some of their finest works, excerpts of personal correspondance and a foreward from a well known admirer; names such as Margaret Drabble, Andrew Motion, and even Germain Greer appearing. In honour of the series, Andrew Motion has recorded a podcast which can be found here

On this day...

British poet George Gordon Byron, more commonly known just as Lord Byron, was born in 1788. A highly controversial character, Byron, it seems was born in to a family of similar ilk. Son of 'Mad Jack', and great-nephew of 'the Wicked Lord', Byron inherited his peerage at the age of ten, and even before then rumours about the nature of his character were surfacing. Accused by many of being bisexual, Byron had many relationships with men and women alike; yet the strigent sodomy laws in Britain at the time neccessitated his travelling abroad for many years to find the freedom he wanted. Due to the Napoleonic Wars, Byron avoided Europe and so travelled to the East and spent time in both Albania and Athens. Following several scandalous affairs, notably with Lady Caroline Lamb, and a marriage marred by rumours of incest, he left for Italy, where he famously met Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary. The subsequent years of his life were of great cultural interest, first contributing to the Armenian language by means of a dictionary, and then to the Greek independence by refitting the Greek fleet with his own money and fighting. A leading Romantic, Byron wrote prolifically, his most famous works including, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' and 'Don Juan'. The man labelled 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', died in 1824, at the age of 36.

On this day...

English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1816.Shelley's second wife, Godwin followed 16 year old Harriet Westbrook, with whom Shelley eloped and had a child. Three years later, he abandoned her in favour of Godwin, and their subsequent marriage came only weeks after Westbrook's suicide. Godwin helped to edit and promote her husband's works, yet was a successful writer in her own right. The Shelleys, Lord Byron, John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont famously spent a summer in Geneva where Mary conceived the idea for her novel 'Frankenstein'. The couple had four children together.

On this day...

Victorian poet Robert Browning died in 1889, at the age of 77. Athough Browning was an astute learner, fluent in French, Latin, Greek and Italian by the age of 14, his mother's evangelical faith prevented him gaining a place at either Oxford or Cambridge; both only open to Church of England members. He therefore resumed his childhood hobby of writing poetry; a career which did not gain him recognition until 1840. Besides his writings, Browning is arguably most famous for his marriage to fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The courtship and ceremony was carried out in secret from Barrett's father, and the couple eloped to Italy, in an imitation of Browning's idol Shelley. Six years his senior and an invalid, Elizabeth was doubtful that Browning was truly sincere in his feeling, and she later expressed the idea in one of her best known works, 'Sonnets from the Portugese'. Browning's own poetic works are recognisable for their use of the dramatic monologue. They often take the form of an unpleasant character, as in 'My Last Duchess', 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'The Laboratory', yet many are set in a different epoch to distinguish them from the Victorian society of the day.

On this day...

Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'Adonais' was first published in England in 1821. Perhaps one of the most poignant elegies in the English language, Shelley's poem was written for fellow romantic poet John Keats, who had died earlier that year at the age of only 25. The title is thought to be a combination of Greek god Adonis and Hewbrew for Lord, Adonai; and so idealised Greek themes of beauty, nature and romance feature heavily throughout. Having been introduced in 1816, Shelley and Keats were close companions; Shelley saying of the latter, after inviting him to stay; 'I am aware indeed that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me and this is an additional motive and will be an added pleasure.' When Shelley died in a year later, at the age of 22, his body was found washed up with a copy a Keats' work in his pocket.

On this day...

Arguably one of the most famous English poets in history, John Keats, was born in 1795. Although his work was not well received in his lifetime, Keats, together with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, is now cited as the one of the cornerstones of the romantic movement in poetry; his works going on to influence and inspire such poets as Alfred Lord Tennyson and Wilfred Owen. Yet his life was tragically short. Soon after his brother Tom died from tuberculosis, Keats himself began to show symptoms of the disease. In 1820, with the signs becoming more pronounced, Keats left for Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. He died in 1821, in a house on the Spainish Steps in Rome, now the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, where works, correspondence and original furniture remain. Known for his florid description and rich imagery, Keats most famous works are 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Endymion'. His death inspired another great work, 'Adonis', by Shelley.