The Keats-Shelley Association of America Blog
Our blog features a range of posts on the topic of Romanticism, including commentary on current news items; dispatches of official K-SAA business and descriptions of our initiatives; calls for contributions; event notices; publication announcements, and more.
We want to hear from K-SAA members and followers! Do you have an idea for a blog post? If so, please view our Call for Submissions or contact The Communications Team.
The British Library’s Romantic and Victorian collections online
The British Library's Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians offers a wealth of material on the British 19th century, including William Blake’s notebook, childhood writings of the Brontë sisters, the manuscript of the Preface to Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, and an early draft of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
The Unbinding Prometheus Project
The Unbinding Prometheus Project, a year-long initiative spearheaded by a broadly constituted group of students and faculty who are centered at the University of Pennsylvania, has announced a slough of activities surrounding the study of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound from numerous disciplinary perspectives and at a singular depth. The project will develop across the year, so the results will be updated continuously on their site.
Ye Are Many: Music, Injustice and P.B. Shelley
Ye Are Many—They Are Few, Cantata for a Just World, an art song with text and music by Norman Mathews, was performed 12 May 2014 at the Cultural Center (the former main public library) in Chicago with the VOX3 Collective Company. Mathews’ cantata turns on the problem of standing up to injustice. The tone is solemn. A powerful amount of text comes from Shelley’s “The Masque of Anarchy.”
NYPL acquires rare “Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire,” P.B. Shelley’s first book of verse
Elizabeth Denliger, curator of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at the New York Public Library, has announced the acquisition of Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810), the first book of verse published by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Known to exist in only three other copies worldwide. Denliger calls it "a black tulip, one of the rarest items in the Shelleyan world." Co-authored with his sister Elizabeth, Original Poetry, says Denliger, is evidence of "Shelley's early and powerful urge to publish" and his "inclination to literary collaboration."
John Keats’s Early Poems, 1814-1817
In order to mark the bicentenary of the composition of ‘Imitation of Spenser’ (1814), John Keats’s earliest known poem, the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association and the Keats Foundation are jointly hosting a day academic seminar on 31 October, Keats’s birthday, at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome.
‘Essays in Romanticism’ and ‘Byron Journal’ content free during April
Jonathan Branney of the Liverpool University Press recently posted an announcement that two its Romanticism-related publications, Essays in Romanticism and the Byron Journal are free to access during the month of April.
Mary Shelley letters unearthed
BBC news has reported the discovery of a small cache of previously unknown letters by Mary Shelley. The find came while Professor Nora Crook of Anglia Ruskin University was researching the holdings of a public records office in Essex, UK. The discovery of the letters, addressed to Horace Smith and his daughter Eliza, was quite by accident, according to Crook. The full article is available here.
Staged Reading of Prometheus Unbound the First Since 1998, Reviewed by Suzanne L. Barnett
On November 18, 2013 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village, Revelation Readings, in conjunction with Red Bull Theater and the Romanticist Research Group of New York University, presented the first staged reading of Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound since 1998. The performance was followed by an informal Q&A with the director, Craig Baldwin, Red Bull artistic director Jesse Berger, Randie Sessler and Omar F. Miranda from the NYU Department of English, and several exhausted cast members who generously remained after the show to discuss the project with the audience. A sold-out crowd of approximately three hundred—apparently comprising both Shelley enthusiasts and theater fans—enjoyed a lively and nuanced performance that was especially impressive given that the cast had only a single rehearsal that same afternoon.

