LGBT Classic Writers: The Romantic Friendship of Shelley & Byron
Join us for a Zoom talk on the infamous exploits of Shelley & Byron, plus a look at another (lesser-known) sexual outlaw, Mary Diana Dods
Cost: $12. Please note that this fee helps keep our small business going during the crisis so we can get up and running right away when it is safe to bring people together again in person.
Colin Carman (author of The Radical Ecology of the Shelleys) will lead us in a fascinating talk covering the sexual transgressions of two of the English Romantic period’s most famous, and infamous, erotic and political writers, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and Lord Byron (1788-1824), followed by a fascinating and revealing look at the life of the lesser-known, but equally scandalous, writer Mary Diana Dods (c.1790-1830).
Beginning with an examination of the life and writings of the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), the talk will focus on his passionate defense of same-sex “romantic friendship” (written in Italy in 1818) and his daring translation of Plato’s Symposium. Carman will then explore the friendship/rivalry between Shelley and Lord Byron, discovering the two English poets’ upbringing and education in the privileged worlds of Eton, Harrow, Oxford, and Cambridge, and their social reputations thereafter for adultery, incest, and homosexuality—which nearly eclipsed their reputations as poets and dramatic writers.
The talk then explores and reveals Carman's fresh research into the mysterious life of writer Mary Diana Dods (c. 1790-1830), the daughter of a Scottish earl, who cross-dressed as a gentleman in Mary Shelley’s friend circle in the 1820s in London. It’s an amazingly true story - still untouched by the movies - as Mary Shelley helped Dods obtain falsified passports in order for Dods to marry an unwed, young mother named Isabella Robinson and move to Europe. Dods, a cross-dressing writer and friend of Mary “Frankenstein” Shelley’s was a sexual outlaw in her own right whose extraordinary deception, and secretive, same-sex marriage to an unwed mother, has only come to light in recent years.
Do not miss this revelatory talk!
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Colin Carman, Ph.D. is the author of The Radical Ecology of the Shelleys: Eros and Environment (Routledge, 2019) and an assistant professor of English at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado. A former fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, he has contributed to five book collections, including Lacan and Romanticism, Romantic Ecocriticism, and The Brokeback Book: From Story to Cultural Phenomenon. His articles, ranging from the Shelleys and Scott to the films of Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick, have appeared in such journals as ISLE, European Romantic Review, GLQ, Studies in Scottish Literature and Horror Studies. In 2019, he was the residential fellow at the Jane Austen House & Museum in Hampshire, England. A Contributing Writer at The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide since 2008, he has published over forty music and film reviews. His forthcoming publications span from Jane Austen to the friendship between Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg.