Poetry at the Post: The Summer of 1816—The Year Without a Summer

UPDATE: Look who just acquired Mary Shelley first editions. 

Mary Shelley Acquisitions
We’re delighted to announce that the Rosenbach has recently acquired a rare first edition (1818) of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, as well as first editions of Shelley’s novels Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), and Falkner (1837). (Rosenbach, Philadelphia)

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.—
Confess. St. August.

Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;

1816, THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER

To be alive in the years 1816-18, almost anywhere in the world, meant to be hungry. Across the globe during the so-called “Year Without a Summer”—which was, in fact, a three-year climate crisis—harvests perished in frost and drought or were washed away by flooding rains. (From 1816, The Year Without a Summer)

A CALL FOR PAPERS! Check it out!

‘Summer of 1816: Creativity and Turmoil’
24-27 June, 2016

An International Conference to be hosted by the University of Sheffield

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona

Professor Michael O’Neill, Durham University

Professor Jane Stabler, University of St Andrews

‘The Summer of 1816: Creativity and Turmoil’ will be held at the University of Sheffield in June 2016. ‘The year without a summer’, as 1816 was known, was the year in which Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (later Shelley), Lord Byron, John Polidori and Claire Claremont came together, for the first time, in Geneva. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of this extraordinary summer, the University of Sheffield will celebrate first and foremost the extraordinary meeting of this circle of Romantic authors, as well as the broader creative contexts of 1816.