Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson E-Book

Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Herausgeber: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 17

Beschreibung

Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friend Jefferson Hogg wrote this collection when they were students at Oxford University.   The subject of the poem, Margaret Nicholson, seems to have suffered from some kind of personality disorder involving delusions that she related to royalty. In 1786 she sent the privy council a rambling petition about usurpers and royal pretenders, and on 2 August that year made a half-hearted attempt on the king's life with a table-knife. The king was unharmed and seeing that she was in more danger from the crowd than he was from her, he said, 'the poor creature is mad; do not hurt her, she has not hurt me.'  The fragments in Shelley and Hogg's book claim to be some of the fragments of petition about usurpers and royal pretenders , and are pastiches in which the young writers put forward their views on war, society and the nature of government.

Leseprobe

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson

Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friend Jefferson Hogg wrote this collection when they were students at Oxford University. 

The subject of the poem, Margaret Nicholson, seems to have suffered from some kind of personality disorder involving delusions that she related to royalty. In 1786 she sent the privy council a rambling petition about usurpers and royal pretenders, and on 2 August that year made a half-hearted attempt on the king’s life with a table-knife. The king was unharmed and seeing that she was in more danger from the crowd than he was from her, he said, ‘the poor creature is mad; do not hurt her, she has not hurt me.’

The fragments in Shelley and Hogg’s book claim to be some of the fragments of petition about usurpers and royal pretenders , and are pastiches in which the young writers put forward their views on war, society and the nature of government.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WAR.

FRAGMENT: SUPPOSED TO BE AN EPITHALAMIUM OF FRANCIS RAVAILLAC AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

DESPAIR.

FRAGMENT.

THE SPECTRAL HORSEMAN.

MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The energy and native genius of these Fragments must be the only apology which the Editor can make for thus intruding them on the public notice. The first I found with no title, and have left it so. It is intimately connected with the dearest interests of universal happiness; and much as we may deplore the fatal and enthusiastic tendency which the ideas of this poor female had acquired, we cannot fail to pay the tribute of unequivocal regret to the departed memory of genius, which, had it been rightly organized, would have made that intellect, which has since become the victim of frenzy and despair, a most brilliant ornament to society.