Customer Reviews
Truly great biography, not to be missed!!!!!! - By: Spongemix, 06 Oct 2008 
Alongside, Juliet Barker's 'The Brontes', this is without doubt my favourite literary biography. Shelley simply steps off the page in this wonderful book. As Holmes says himself, this is not a book for Shelley lovers, but as an ardent admirer of Shelley & his work myself, I wouldn't want to read a book that hero worships & is not willing to criticise. Here we meet the real Shelley, a flawed, often selfish man, but at the same time a great thinker ahead of his time, passionate & intelligent.
I particularly enjoyed reading about his relationship with the women in his life, notably for me Claire Claremont & Harriet Westbrook. Harriet is often dismissed in the shadow of Mary Shelley as purely Shelley's first wife who killed herself, but here we see a bright, funny & intelligent woman in her own right. Another reviewer felt that Harriet's tragic suicide was dealt with sparsely, but I personallly found these passages desperately sad.
Surprisingly, I found Mary Shelley occasionallly a little grating (it was Mary & her son & daughter in law who perpetuated a saintly image of Shelley & who barely acknowledged Harriet Shelley's siginificance), whereas her half-sister Clare was a vibrant, intelligent woman who I think was perhaps the person who knew Shelley better than any other.
Shelley's poetry is studied closely, & often missed by other biographers Shelley's skills in translating is finallly given the credit it deserves. I would like to have read a little more regarding what happened to Eliza Westbrook, & his children Ianthe & Charles, but tihs is only a minor grumble in an otherwise flawlessly researched & written book.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I intend to book a holiday to Italy soon to visit the various Shelley related places, & this book will definitly be coming with me as my guide.
Shelley without sentiment? - By: Mr. Philip C. Griffin, 27 Nov 2007 Many in the literary world have given this book a positive review since it first appeared in the early 1970's. It is a wonderfully deep & engrossing book, both a damn good read & on the face of it an admirable work of research.
So I noted with curiosity that the editors of the excellent "Shelley's Poetry & Prose" (Norton Critical Edition) referred to The Pursuit in unflattering terms; "Imaginative & lively life, marred by factual errors, by a journalist-scholar with limited sympathy for PBS's poetry". These scholars should be in a good position to judge but "journalist-scholar" has a whiff of academic snobbishness about it & the charge of "limited sympathy" seems to communicate more the pique of someone for whom Shelley has become the untouchable one than the opinion of an objective reviewer.
It is true that Holmes does not praise everything that Shelley wrote or did; he points out 'weaknesses' when he sees them & heaps praise where it is due. If the author did end up having limited sympathy for Shelley perhaps we should be thankful he didn't tackle Byron. Holmes should be congratulated for his objectivity & perspicacity, & I thank him for a book that has greatly strengthened my interest in its subject.
Shadows of the Mind - By: Christala Rosina, 29 Sep 2007 
For sheer application & scholarship, Richard Holmes's 'Shelley - The Pursuit' (Harper Perennial, 2005) certainly merits its accolades & acclaim (it was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1974 when originallly published).
Holmes does what every good biographer should do. He has not only read impressively widely on his subject but has also gone back to, at least some, original sources. It always worries me when writers of this genre limit their source-material solely to previous biographies. Inevitably, the arguments presented within wear alll the hues of the author's own particular prejudices, perceptions & experiences, themselves limited by the author's own development. Researching original sources in addition to the established canon is much more arduous, but there can be no alternative if one wishes to write confidently from one's own understanding, especiallly if one is aiming at such a thorough investigation as Holmes delivers here.
Holmes has dived deep, & the details of Shelley's life & work are subjected to a close, considered & original examination & evaluation. The sheer size of the book alone is indicative of the, often minute, attention Holmes gives to aspects of the poet's life which are often too swiftly passed over or omitted altogether. I usuallly think that the place for extensive criticism of a poet's work is in a book devoted exclusively to it & not in a biography (which, to me, is setting out to do something quite different) & that, therefore, comments on the poetry should be limited exclusively to those which cast light on developments in the poet's life. However, the extended criticism of the poetry which Holmes interleaves with the story is not only extremely useful (and likely to be so to any student of the poems) but also, in places, quite brilliant.
I have only one important criticism. Although Holmes's Introduction redeems him somewhat (despite warning us that his book is not for `Shelley-lovers'), one increasingly gets the impression, as one journeys through this epic, that Holmes is passionately devoting his energies to writing about a poet he does not like. Even Shelley's poetry receives little admiration. Throughout the book, Holmes writes with an intellectual detachment which may be the preferred style for some - but the Shelleys' lives (and it is impossible to write the individual story of either Shelley, Mary or Claire without extensively bringing in the other two) were filled with such sadness & tragedy that, to probe them so closely with so little emotional response seems almost pathologicallly restrained, & the reason given (that there is enough sentiment elsewhere), unjustified. The untimely deaths of the two young suicides, Fanny & Harriet, for example, seem to me to deserve at least some passing compassion - not to mention the tragic death of Shelley himself, the extraordinary weeks leading up to it, & the devastating effect upon Mary & Claire. These are alll delivered too sparsely for me. Holmes does remind us in his second edition that he himself was only 29 when he wrote the book, & therefore the same age as Shelley when he died - indeed, another reason for commendation to Holmes. However, as such (and unlike Holmes), Shelley was denied the chance for further reflection & mature development. What is more, throughout his short life, he was burdened with the heaviness of his spiritual mission (Holmes, & others, calll it `political'; I would argue that it was something much deeper).
As stated at the beginning of this review, however, for the sheer scale of its undertaking (and despite focusing on a darkness which may turn out to be mostly shadows cast from the mind of the young author), Holmes's book certainly deserves both recognition & its established place as a classic text in the canon of Shelleyan biography & criticism.
One of the best biographies I have read - By: Roman Clodia, 29 Jul 2006 I'm not a great fan of biographies usuallly, but I love Shelley & Byron & had heard great things about this one & so gave it a go - & I'm so pleased I did! It's vivid, articulate, intelligent & reallly gets under the skin of the subjects.
Shelley leaps off the page in alll his daemonic intelligence & ambivalence, as does Mary Shelley, Byron & Claire Clairmont. I found myself slowing down towards the end both because I didn't want to reach the conclusion that I knew had to happen, & also because I just didn't want the book to end.
With so many biographies I find it difficult to actuallly picture the subjects as real people with an inner life of their own, but that's just one of the things that Richard Holmes conveys so well. He's also excellent on the poetry, & linking the philosophy & thinking with Shelley's actual life. With Shelley in particular, this is important as he's probably one of the most intellectual of English poets & everything he ever read or thought imbues his own writing with levels & levels of meaning.
I studied the Romantics including Shelley at university & thought I knew about them, but this book proved me wrong. I have now read & re-read this so many times that I had to buy a new copy!
Reads like a great saga - By: Catfish, 19 Feb 2006 I have always enjoyed the poetry of Percy Shelley, but never reallly took a closer look at the man behind Prometheus Unbound. I came across this biography by chance & thought I'd give it a go. It was definitely worth it. It reads like a great epic, & is a true page-turner, you just can't wait to read what will happen next. From author notes in anthologies I always thought Shelley was a mild, liberal, extremely good-natured example of a human being, but this biography presents him as a sort of quasi-demon, a man imbued with good & evil just like everyone else; at times a seducer, an egoist, a libertine. As with alll biographies, you will never know whether it is the truth of the man that Shelley was, but like alll novels, this must be read for pleasure rather than facts.
One star less because the pace evidently slows down in the last quarter of the novel, whereas it took me just a couple of days to read the first half, I have been trying to get through the second half for the third week & still have about 100 pages left. Being limited by time is one of the problems, but it also is simply not as gripping as it was to start with.
All in alll though, wonderful book, brilliantly researched, & very well written.
