Alastor: Or the Spirit of Solitude And Other Poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley · Mary Shelley · Bertram Dobell
Jul 2021 · Voices of Today · Narrated by Denis Daly
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1 hr 37 min
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Alastor
Or the Spirit of Solitude
And Other Poems
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Narrated by Denis Daly
This meditation on artistic creativity was written during the latter months of 1815, during a sojourn on the border of Windsor Forest. Critics have concurred in the opinion that the anonymous hero of the poem is Shelley himself, who feared that he too would become an "inheritor of unfulfilled renown." Today, the poem is considered to be the first major work of Shelley's maturity.
Appended to the collection were a number of shorter pieces:
1) To Coleridge
2) Stanzas — April 1814
3) Mutability
4) The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
5) A Summer-evening Church-yard
6) To Wordsworth
7) Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte
8) Superstition
9) Sonnet from the Italian of Dante
10) Translated from the Greek of Moschus
11) The Daemon of the World
The final poem is a reworking of the first two cantos of a much larger work, Queen Mab, which was first published in 1813.
Production copyright 2021 Voices of Today
Or the Spirit of Solitude
And Other Poems
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Narrated by Denis Daly
This meditation on artistic creativity was written during the latter months of 1815, during a sojourn on the border of Windsor Forest. Critics have concurred in the opinion that the anonymous hero of the poem is Shelley himself, who feared that he too would become an "inheritor of unfulfilled renown." Today, the poem is considered to be the first major work of Shelley's maturity.
Appended to the collection were a number of shorter pieces:
1) To Coleridge
2) Stanzas — April 1814
3) Mutability
4) The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
5) A Summer-evening Church-yard
6) To Wordsworth
7) Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte
8) Superstition
9) Sonnet from the Italian of Dante
10) Translated from the Greek of Moschus
11) The Daemon of the World
The final poem is a reworking of the first two cantos of a much larger work, Queen Mab, which was first published in 1813.
Production copyright 2021 Voices of Today
About the author
Born in Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex, Shelley was educated at Syon House Academy and Eton, where he acquired the sobriquet "Mad Shelley" for his independent spirit. While at Eton he published Zastrozzi (1810), a Gothic novel. Expelled from Oxford because he refused to retract his atheistic beliefs, Shelley quarreled with his wealthy father and was banished from home. Shelley married impulsively and then abandoned his young wife to run off to Italy with the 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the daughter of the radical feminist and the anarchist philosopher, who was eventually to write Frankenstein). While in Italy, Shelley became close friends with Byron, and the two became objects of endless, notorious rumor. Shelley's personal character was revered by almost everyone who knew him. Extremely generous toward others, frugal with himself, he strove tirelessly for the betterment of humanity. Prometheus Unbound (1820), a lyrical drama in four acts, calls for the regeneration of society through love and for the destruction of all repressive institutions. The Cenci (1819), a verse drama based on real events, is one of the few plays from the romantic period still produced. Shelley's lyrics are marvelously varied and rich in sound and rhythm. Wordsworth regarded him as the best artist among living poets.Adonais (1821), written to honor the memory of John Keats, is one of the supreme elegies in English.The Triumph of Life, which was left incomplete at his death, has been hailed by T. S. Eliot as the nearest approach in English to Dante (see Vol. 2). The "Ode to the West Wind" and "To a Skylark" are anthologized everywhere. Shelley's early death by drowning ended his career just as it was coming into full flower. A revolutionary in his art and life, Shelley is considered by many to be an inspired polemicist and poetic genius. As one of his contemporaries wrote in Etonian (1821), "He is one of the many whom we cannot read without wonder, or without pain...."
Denis Daly is an audiobook narrator, located in Perth, Western Australia.
Bertram Dobell (1842 - 1914) was an English literary critic.
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