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== Shelley's campaign in Dublin ==
Aemilius Adolphin could you please explain the criteria by why you deem "excessive" the merest allusion (a one line reference) to the fact that Shelley, with his new-wed wife, journeyed to Dublin, had at his own expense 1,500 copies printed of a 22-page pamphlet (however naïve and immature, a first major statement of political views) and then, not only went around Dublin handing them out, but was persuaded on the strength of the reaction (or lack of it) to compose a 32-point Declaration of Rights of be pasted about the city?
All this might well be considered "excessive" (extraordinary behaviour by any measure), but how "excessive" to a biographic article that, among other arresting details, reports that as a child he blew up a paling fence with gunpowder?
Keeping things in perspective, we are talking here of just half a sentence. Regards[[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]])
: Because it unnecessarily repeats information already in the article and which is irrelevant to Shelley's views on non-violence. viz: "In Ireland, Shelley wrote, published and personally distributed three political tracts: An Address, to the Irish People; Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists; and Declaration of Rights. He also delivered a speech at a meeting of O’Connell’s Catholic Committee in which he called for Catholic emancipation, repeal of the Act of Union and an end to the oppression of the Irish poor. Reports of Shelley’s subversive activities were sent to the Home Secretary." Please read the entire article before you add information.[[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 22:33, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
We see that yesterday you added the qualifier "personally" to the earlier line about Shelley distributing tracts in Dublin. As this appeared in the edit history as '''→Marriage to Harriet Westbrook: added word "personally"''' we had not picked up on it. So yes, we agree no need to repeat this revealing fact again. Thanks and all the best, [[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]])
== Mentioning "every person Shelley ever met" ==
Aemilius Adolphin undid revision 1030652169 arguing: "once again you are cluttering the article with unnecessary detail. No one is interested in who recommended Shelley see a doctor or who Shelley was with when he read some books which possibly inspired one theme in one of his poems. This is not a full length biography of Shelley nor an excuse to mention every person Shelley ever met."
An excuse is being sought "to mention every person Shelley ever met"--come on!. But let's just accept that Shelly's meeting the harpist and singer Sophia Stacey is a "necessary" detail and that mention of the Shelleys's friendship with the writer Margaret King (Lady Mountchashell) (about whom Shelly wrote in praise) is superfluous.
Even if treated with caution, what should not be as likely dismissed is Timothy Morton's observation in the ''Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age'' and ''Shelley and the Revolution in Taste'' that King and William Tighe "inspired Shelley with a new found sense of radicalism". Regardless of what influence is to be found in what Shelley was still to write in the year remaining to him (Morton does see an element Tighe both in the ''Philosophical View of Reform'' and ''Ode to Liberty'') it is worth at least ONE SENTENCE to note that, at a difficult time when he had much else to distract him, at Tighe's prompting Shelley threw himself into a study of the agricultural chemistry of Davy and of the political economy of Malthus (including Godwin's ''answer to Malthus'').
If nothing else it is a mark of Shelley's undimmed intellectual curiosity and breath--worth at least a sentence. [[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]])
: I tend to agree. Both [[Margaret King]] and [[George William Tighe]] are notable in their own right. [[User:Martinevans123|Martinevans123]] ([[User talk:Martinevans123|talk]]) 18:41, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
:: You've convinced me. I've expanded the information on Mrs Mason and Tighe, although the most direct poetical influence is on "The Sensitive Plant" which Shelley states was inspired by Mrs Mason. [[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 00:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Yes, and that reads better than my attempted revision.[[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]])
== Field Place ==
Here is a source about [https://www.parksandgardens.org/places/field-place Field Place]. As the map shows, it's not really near [[Warnham]], it's near [[Clemsfold]]. But that's a redlink, so "near [[Rudgwick]]" might be better? [[User:Martinevans123|Martinevans123]] ([[User talk:Martinevans123|talk]]) 23:07, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
:The problem with putting just "Field Place, [[Warnham]]" is that it's more than 4 miles from Warnham and is much nearer [[Rudgwick]]. The existing source Holmes (2005) [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Shelley/2zI7RDSSltIC?hl=en&printsec=frontcover here] (from page 1 onwards), does not seem to be very specific. Thanks. [[User:Martinevans123|Martinevans123]] ([[User talk:Martinevans123|talk]]) 08:58, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
::How about just Field Place, West Sussex? The problem I have with Rudgwick is that it's a rather obscure village which has no relevance to the life of Shelley. Is the intention to help contemporary readers find his place of birth or to record the current official address (which is Field Place, City of Warnham, West Sussex)? Or to record the address at the time Shelley was born (which I understand was Field Place, Parish of Warnham?) A guest editor who lives locally said a few months back that it is definitely in the current boundaries of Warnham (which perhaps are larger than the village?). "Field Place, near Warnham" is how his birthplace is described in Holmes'biography. [[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 09:44, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
:::Thanks for your comment. The problem with " Field Place, West Sussex" is that it makes it sound like it's a town or a village. It is (or was) just a single property/estate. I can assure you it's not a city, lol. I have obviously missed that recent dialogue. The parish of Warnham is very likely to be bigger than the village. I guess I should consult an OS map. "Field Place, near Warnham" looks fine to me. A redlink for Field Place itself may not really be justified. [[User:Martinevans123|Martinevans123]] ([[User talk:Martinevans123|talk]]) 09:55, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
::::OK, happy with that. The source you posted gives the address as "City of Warnham" (in the Location box, just below the map). So maybe "city" has a special meaning locally? [[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 10:03, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
:::::"{{tq|[[Warnham]] is a [[village]] and [[civil parish]] in the [[Horsham]] district of [[West Sussex]], England.}}" I think "city" is probably a mistake in the design of that webpage. Thanks. [[User:Martinevans123|Martinevans123]] ([[User talk:Martinevans123|talk]]) 10:09, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
::::::Page 2 of [https://www.horsham.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/66849/Warnham-Parish-Design-Statement.pdf this document] shows the parish boundary for Warnham. This [https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1026916 historicengland.org source] says that Field Place is on Byfleets Lane. So I have to conclude that the map at [https://www.parksandgardens.org/places/field-place parksandgardens.org] is incorrect! So yes, it's in Warnham parish. [[User:Martinevans123|Martinevans123]] ([[User talk:Martinevans123|talk]]) 18:25, 16 March 2022 (UTC) p.s. I have now added a piped link to [[Warnham#Field Place|Field Place]].
== Huh? ==
I should have looked at [[The Necessity of Atheism]] before writing the above, because it says that Hogg may have been co-author of the piece. I'll edit [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]] accordingly. [[User:Maurice Magnus|Maurice Magnus]] ([[User talk:Maurice Magnus|talk]]) 01:32, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
== The Devil's Walk ==
Hello there
Thanks for adding the two specific works that Shelley distributed and Lynmouth. I have cut the quotes and shortened the description of the works. The Devil's Walk already has a wikilink where readers can find out the background of the poem. The point of the sentence is that Shelley was under surveillance for sedition. Detail about minor poems and how they were distributed break the flow of the narrative. Also please don't put links to external sites in the body of the article. See policy: [[MOS:EL]] . And if you copy and paste content from other articles, as you appear to have done from [[The Devil's Walk]], you need to include an attribution in the edit summary.
Happy to discuss on the article Talk page [[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 02:32, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
I am sorry, but I can see no justification for suppressing a brief, single-sentence, reference to the political context and content of the ''The Devil Walk'', and for leaving the reader to guess why it should have been considered "subversive"---a reference that is not a paste from another article, but does include a couple of phrases direct from the ballad itself. You may consider ''The Devil Walk'' a "minor poem" (which, as overtly political ballad addressing period issues, perhaps it is in a literary sense). But Bieri doesn't dismiss it as minor, nor does Sally West (''Coleridge and Shelley'')''. The Cambridge Companion to Shelley'' lists the ''The Devil's Walk''<nowiki> as an example among a half dozen of his works that contributed to "the literary character of the age", and notes its importance to Shelley's later reception in Germany. But, in either case, it was clearly important to Shelley, as evidenced by the extraordinary lengths he went to broadcast it (which you also deem an "excessive" detail) and surely not more incidental to understanding of Shelley's character and thought than many of the private incidents and encounters recorded in the page. It is a single sentence, which having following on your designation of the ballad as "subversive" I cannot see as having broken "the flow of the narrative".
Regards~~~</nowiki> [[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]]) 11:17, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
:The additional sentence for reference is:
:Returning from Ireland, the Shelley household travelled to Wales, then to the small coastal village of [[Lynmouth|Lynmouth in Devon]]. Here they again came under government surveillance for distributing Shelley's ''Declaration of Rights'' and his political broadsheet ballad ''[[The Devil's Walk]].''<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bieri |first=James |url= |title=Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography : Youth's Unextinguished Fire, 1792-1816 |date=2004 |publisher=University of Delaware Press |isbn=978-0-87413-870-2 |pages=255 |language=en}}</ref><ref>Holmes (1974), pp. 146-149, 158-160</ref> <u>Written in in the wake of a local food riot, this has the devil noting how "the wealthy plunder and impoverish the poor" and, under a "brainless king", profit from the war with France</u>.<ref>Gilmour, Ian. ''The Making of the Poets: Byron and Shelley in Their Time''. NY: Carrol and Graf, 2002, pp. 334–336.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Shelley |first=Percy B |date=1812 |title=The Devil's Walk. A Ballad |url=https://allpoetry.com/login |access-date=2025-07-16 |website=allpoetry.com |language=en}}</ref> [[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]]) 11:38, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
::I am not suppressing anything, I'm trying to write the article in a summary style. Detail about the background of the poem and quotes from it can be found in the wikilinked article. It's a question of balance and the weight given to incidental detail in a section about Shelly's life rather than his poetry (which is covered in another section). Nor did you add only one sentence.
::This is what the article originally said:
::"Returning from Ireland, the Shelley household travelled to Wales, then to the small coastal village of [[Lynmouth|Lynmouth in Devon]]. Here they again came under government surveillance for distributing Shelley's ''Declaration of Rights'' and his political broadsheet ballad ''[[The Devil's Walk]]''Elizabeth Hitchener joined the household in Devon, but several months later had a falling out with the Shelleys and left. In September 1812, the Shelley household had settled in [[Tremadog]], Wales."
::This is what you added: "Here, joined for a time by Elizabeth Hitchener, they again came under government surveillance for attempting to distribute Shelley radical tracts by, among other means, casting them upon the tide in corked bottles and aloft in hot-air balloons''.'' Written in the wake of a local food riot, they included a broadsheet ballad ''[[The Devil's Walk]]'' in which "the wealthy" are seen to "plunder and impoverish the poor" and, under a "brainless king", to profit from the war with France. In September 1812, following the arrest of his local printer, Shelley and his family returned across the [[Bristol Channel]] to Wales."
::The previous version is better written and far more concise and gets the essential information across. It doesn't really matter how Shelley tried to distribute the two works (in fact he mainly did so by post and by telling his 15 year old Irish servant a to nail them up to walls and doors). Nor does your cited source say anything about the poem The Devil's Walk being inspired by a local food riot. We don't really need to say what inspired the Devil's Walk or provide our own selected quotes: that is done in the link to the article on the poem. We have already explained that this was a subversive political ballad. Nor does it matter that he went to Wales across the Bristol Channel. It's worth noting that he decided to flee after his servant was arrested (not his printer) for posting his flysheets [Bieri (2008) pp. 218-19; Holmes (1974) pp. 158-160]. I will add that. As a compromise I will also add some of your tangential details to a footnote with the correct citations. [[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 03:40, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
:::I have added the following sentence to the paragraph on Shelley in Kenswick in 1811: "Shelley became increasingly radicalised as the war with Napoleon brought economic recession, food riots, and government suppression of political dissent." This is the background of his trip to Ireland and his radical poems and essays over the next few years. I think this, and the wikilink to The Devil's Walk, gives sufficient background to that poem. Happy to discuss. [[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 06:37, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
::[[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] EVERYTHING on a Wiki page is to be found, and can be followed up, in linked articles--that is a sourcing obligation, and in itself cannot be an argument for excluding something from the page. The question your repeated reversions raise is why a reference to what Shelley actually wrote in Devon, the context in which he wrote it and the lengths he went to have distributed and read, should be dismissed as "tangential". Tangential to what?--tangential to what had otherwise been recorded of his time in Lynmouth, namely that he had been joined by Elizabeth Hitchener but that they then had a "falling out"?
::That Shelley had a relationship with Hitchner, or was expelled from Oxford, or admired Harriet de Boinville, or lived for a time Keswick or any other of the related incidentals of his life is not, of course, why he has Wiki page. It is because of his acclaim as a writer, an acclaim that has scholars curious about his life story as a context for understanding why he wrote what he wrote. But here we seem to have the relationship almost in reverse. The bulk of the page is the "Life" section where the emphasis is on the personal rather than on the published.
::The particular issue your reversions raise, is the same issue we discussed four years ago (see above) when I first made reference to what Shelley had been up to on his visit to Dublin in 1812 (and upon which we did eventually reach a compromise). To what extent should there be direct reference to the substance of Shelley's political polemics which, if acknowledged, were otherwise simply described as "subversive"? There is a section at the end on Shelley's "Political, religious and ethical views", but it discusses his politics only in the most general terms and does not advance beyond what very little was said in the Life section.
::I am not proposing to launch upon the page a new discussion of Shelley's politics--I couldn't do that. I only ask why a page that has room for such incidentals as Shelley passing a month in Edinburgh, or resenting the influence upon Harriet of her sister, or having an affair with Claire Godwin while eloped with her sister Mary, or falsely naming Mary the mother of Elena, cannot accommodate a reference to Shelley in ''The Devil's Walk''<nowiki> pilloring the king and ministers for allowing "the wealthy" to "plunder" the poor [his words] and profit from war. Or, indeed, to his going to the length of having copies of the ballad cast in bottles upon the tide and lofted into the air in balloons--absurd or whimsical actions perhaps, but not "tangential" to the politically repressive nature of the time, or to the character of the writer. ~~~</nowiki> [[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]]) 20:57, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
:::Because the section is on his life, and for most people their private life--especially their most intimate relationships--is more important than their politics. And according to most critics Shelley's emotional life and intimate relationships inspired most of his best poetry. His politics has a section all of its own. And the poem The Devil's Walk has an article all of its own which is wikilinked. And we already say that it was a subversive poem attacking the government. And the phrase "a brainless king" isn't so great an example of Shelley's poetry or political wit that it should be highlighted. And we say less about many of his other far better poems in the life section because that section is not supposed to be a discussion of individual poems. I have already made several compromises with you. I still think that it isn't important exactly which Shelley works brought the renewed government surveillance because they are not among his major works. But we now specify two of them. I also don't think it's important exactly how they were distributed, but now we mention this in a footnote. I do think it is important that we mention the political climate which gave rise to Shelley's increased political activism (it wasn't just one local food riot) and now there is a sentence explaining this. If you can't live with these compromises I suggest you seek a third party opinion. [[User:Aemilius Adolphin|Aemilius Adolphin]] ([[User talk:Aemilius Adolphin|talk]]) 22:19, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
::::Yes, Shelley's emotional life and intimate relationships may well have inspired most of his best poetry. That we include details about these without, necessarily, drawing a link to his work is without objection--we don't need to connect all the dots. But that we include these while excluding the briefest reference to what Shelley actually expressed in a work recognised by ''The Cambridge Companion to Shelley'' as having contributed to "the literary character of the age"-- and, we could add, while excluding any discussion of the more famous politial ballad'', The Mask of Anarchy'', indisputedly a major work -- seems perverse. How does it work that we are to regard as important that in York "Eliza moved in with Harriet and Hogg" or that the paternity of Elena Shelley has "never been conclusively established" but regard as ''unimportant'' that, risking prosecution, Shelley and his household went to extraordinary lengths to distribute a ballad in which he denounced the rich for plundering the poor and profiting from the war?
::::That ''The Devil's Walk'' isn't his "best poetry"? That's hardly the point. As the lead to our page acknowledges, Shelley's is remembered not just for his poetics, but for being a "sceptical intellect", a "radical", not only in his poetry, but also "in his political and social views". That those who are curious as to why the ballad should be considered "subversive" can just follow the links? We could as easily say that those who are interested in the intimacies of Shelley's circle can follow the links, and that we need say nothing.
::::But I see that I am repeating myself.
::::<nowiki>I leave this to you. ~~~</nowiki> [[User:ManfredHugh|ManfredHugh]] ([[User talk:ManfredHugh|talk]]) 16:33, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
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