Shelley’s Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family

From 02 Dec 2010 to 26 Mar 2011

3 December-27 March 2011. This major exhibition at the Bodleian Library is dedicated to one of the best known literary families in Britain: the Shelleys.

The exhibition focuses on Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary Shelley and her parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Over the years the Shelley estate donated much of the family archive to the Bodleian while the Abinger papers were purchased by the library in 2004. The exhibition charts the history of three generations of literary genius marred by tragedy.

Highlights include a letter from John Keats, William Godwin's diary and the original manuscripts of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.