In Defense of Harriet Shelley

MP3 Audio CD. IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY




I

I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of
them to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water
of ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living
on the fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of
Shelley, if I had been justly dealt with.

During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance.
I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and
that that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive
honor by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter.
This was all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the
proofs of it were in this book, and that this book's verdict is accepted
in the girls' colleges of America and its view taught in their literary
classes.