Shelley : A Life Story

Collins, [London], first edition, 1946. Cloth, 8vo, 22 cm,. 320 pp. From the blurb: "Probably the characteristic difference between Mr. Blunden's book and other full-length studies of Shelley is that he does not assume his readers to be literary students nor his subject to have been simply a literary figure. His Shelley is a man of genius capable of mastery in many kinds of action, who brought into literature, and poetry especially a power which might have given him a name in other departments of intellectual or active life. As it was, he revealed his possibilities in flashes except for that which he continuously and unremittingly chose - the life of the artist, comparable not so much perhaps with that of most other English poets as with that of the painters. This devotion to an art formed the central part of the life of Shelley and can be steadily felt through the extraordinary personal episodes and problems which his biographer narrates. Mr. Blunden has included all that can illustrate both the inward and outward course of this profoundly gifted man. He has been able to give some new details and to bring out the significance and relation of old ones in a new manner. He regards the story of Shelley, as a story of human experience, in the light of a truly fascinating romance of real life; and though he is far from echoing the notion that Shelley was a beautiful but ineffectual angel he does not forget that he was a gloriously exceptional man. Good.