Percy Shelley: Relationship With Byron
Percy Shelley was indeed, good friends with Lord Byron, and confessed to Mary that he always seemed the most inspired to write while in Byron’s company. In the summer of 1816, Claire, formerly Jane Clairmont, Percy, and Mary traveled to Switzerland once more. Claire had begun an affair with Lord Byron in the previous spring, and though he had lost interest in her, she used Mary and Percy as bait to lure him to Lake Geneva. Byron followed, with his personal physician, John Polidori, the famous author of The Vampyr; for Byron was also fond of Percy’s character, and encouraged his blossoming literary ability, –while naturally flaunting his own, of course.
The two parties rented cottages on the banks of the lake, and visited one another often enough; the famous ghost story contest which produced Frankenstein, and The Vampyr, took place during their stay on Lake Geneva, –two stories that even today, inspire plenty of controversy over actual authorship. The circle of friends, aside from Claire, were all great authors, though undiscovered in that time, except for Lord Byron, whose charm and venomous nature was said to have been Polidori’s inspiration for The Vampyr; it was Byron who was the vampire.
Percy and Lord Byron often went on boat trips around the lake with one another, and it was during these occasions when they would discuss intellectual topics, –just generally discussing current event and political ideals. It was during one such trip that Percy was inspired to write the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. This work was considered by many to be his first major accomplishment since he had written Alastor, years before, –at least in that time. Several works of Shelley’s have emerged since, and all of which are considered major literary achievements.
