Lord Byron at the Movies

Learn why Ken Russell’s Gothic is so over-the-top and ends up falling flat
Learn about Hugh Grant as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Lord Byron
Learn how Dr. Who’s time travel can illuminate the past (as well as the present)
Learn how Lord Byron’s poem “Darkness” can be read as an ecological warning

00:00 Introduction
01:38 Ken Russell’s Gothic
10:45 Haunted Summer
12:50 Rowing with the Wind
17:01 Doctor Who and The Haunting of the Villa Diodati
18:01 Use (or non use) of audio clips
21:19  More Doctor Who at the Villa
27:46 Darkness (and ecology)
29:52 Time travel as a genre
35:07 Podcast structure (time travel versus ghost)
38:41 Sources and outro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo_g4Iuo5DQ&list=PLLTplfD7l2HyUBQNO8WpocustNvKpWcw0&index=4

Transcript

0:00 INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Celebrate Poe, and just to let you know - plans are to release this podcast every Monday night at 12:00 Midnight. The musical intro is from Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite song - Come Rest in This Bosom.  This series of  episodes deals with several English writers who heavily influenced Poe - especially the English Romantic poets. And this is Episode Fifty Two - Byron at the Movies.  Or if you prefer, Swiss Monster Movies - all of the movies in this episode are based on events that took place in Switzerland - and the movie BBC production of Byron will be covered in the next episode.

Now - Do you like movies?  Sure we all do.  That sounds like a series of ads featuring Sally Struthers - boy, that’s an old reference - in a commercial for International Correspondence Schools.  Sally Struthers, Gloria on All in the Family, always began the ad by saying, “Do you want to earn more money?   Sure we all do.” As a result, the line, “Sure we all do.” became a punchline itself.  So “Do you like movies?  Sure we all do.”

1:38 Ken Russell’s Gothic

The first movie in this episode about the 1816 literary competition at the Villa Diodatti is called Gothic, directed by frequently over-the-top director Ken Russell.  Gothic takes place near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, but was shot in an old historic mansion in England.  The movie has the usual plot - somewhat fictionalized - with Mary Godwin, her stepsister Claire Clairemont, and Mary’s future husband Percy Shelley staying for a while with Lord Byron, and his physician friend, Dr. John Polidori.  One June 16 they start playing a game of hide-and-seek.  Later in a parlor, Percy Shelley talks about his interest in science, Polidori tells them about his interests in sleepwalking and nightmares.  Not to be outdone, Lord Byron shows his guests Phantasmagoria - a book of horror stories he bought in Geneva.  They read excerpts from the book and end up having a seance around a human skull.  Claire then has what appears to be a seizure.   The character of Lord Byron just stands there and smugly stares at Claire while she foams at the mouth and writhes on the floor.

Mary - remember she is Claire’s half sister - describes them as Claire’s horrors, and recalls times during their childhood when unexplained events would occur around them  - such as Claire’s bed shaking for no apparent reason or doors slamming shut by themselves.   

DOOR SHUT (several times)

Later, Lord Byron performs oral sex on Claire, during which she has a miscarriage - CLASSY GUY!  And Percy claims to smell an overpowering scent of decay and becomes more and more paranoid.  Jump to Mary at the bottom of a staircase - she hears a noise and feels liquid dripping on her.   She naturally looks up, and sees Dr. Polidori leaning over the banister holding on to a bleeding wound on his neck.  When the bleeding has lessened, the good doctor claims to have been bitten by a vampire in his room.  Byron - always concerned about other people’s feelings - NOT - accuses Dr. Polidori of self-inflicting the wounds.  Percy begins ranting and raving - saying that the group gave birth to something during the seance.
Polidori is scared of damnation for his homosexuality - apparently he actually was gay - but he also suffered from depression and was to eventually commit suicide.

At one point, Percy Shelley goes running and screaming, and encounters Claire Clairmont while he stares at her breasts.  Oh this is not any ordinary breast staring -  Percy has taken laudanum, and imagines Claire’s nipples slowly change into really creepy eyes.  But, in my opinion, what should have come off as really scary, is actually kinda funny.

Mary then attempts to run out of the house, and crashes though a glass door.  Percy begins to believe that the presence haunting them is feeding  off the group’s fear.   

But wait - it gets better.  Polidari tries to hang himself, but fails. He sees a strange figure racing away from him on horseback. Byron and Percy feel the best thing to do to banish any evil spirits is to recreate the seance.

Meanwhile, in the basement Claire is discovered nude and covered in mud.  I mean why not?  Byron tries to hold the seance, but Mary refuses.  (I can’t imagine why?)  Mary tries to crush the skull that Byron attempts to use in the seance.  I guess this was the skull from the previous seance,
She then attempts to stab Byron with a shard.  Percy stops her, and Percy Shelley begins kissing Lord Byron passionately.   By now, their kissing doesn’t come across as shocking or strange, but more of a ho-hum, why not?

Mary flees through the home, and sees a vision of her son William in a coffin.  I know in life, Mary had suffered a miscarriage but showing a vision of her son in a coffin strikes me as a bit much.  In the movie, Mary tries to throw herself off the balcony, but is stopped by Percy.   She wakes up the next morning to join Byron, Percy, and Claire in the garden.

Many historians and journalists have suggested that the events of the literary competition that was to inspire Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's "The Vampyre" were triggered by the group's use of opium during their vacation together. Discussing the film's basis in reality, the actor Julian Sands, who played Shelley, later commented:
I think these portraits are rooted in reality. If people think otherwise, it's because of the later Victorian whitewash of them. These were not simply beautiful Romantic poets. They were subversive, anarchic hedonists pursuing a particular line of amorality. The film portrays Lord Byron as demonic and Shelley as on the verge of madness, but the film is an expressionist piece, and that's not an unreasonable expression of their realities.

If you watch the movie, you might be left with the impression that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was inspired by the loss of her child; but film historian Robert Shail retorts that idea by writing that Gothic's  "baroque visuals can't disguise the dubious nature of Russell's premise that the book was inspired by the author's loss of a baby.”
At one time, Lord Byron looks down on a dark floor and sees the head of a roast pig - then he looks at the hog’s head again and it is the head of Polidori - then it is a pig again - what is going on? - And ultimately, who cares?
I guess the movie’s greatest claim to fame is that it was one of the earliest roles of the late Natasha Richardson of the Richardson/Redgrave family.  Her mother was Vanessa Redgrave - one of the greatest actresses alive.  Vanessa Redgrave also played Lady Melbourne in the vastly superior Byron - another movie about Lord Byron that this podcast will review in the next episode.
Gothic ends with modern day tourists visiting the Villa.  A voice-over announces that Mary's son, William, died three years later. Percy drowned in  1822, Mary Shelley died at the age of fifty-three, and Claire died a spinster at the age of eighty one.
This movie does have its share of over-the-top visuals - some were hallucinatory - some were confusing and most seemed completely unmotivated - which I can deal with.  Even though I wanted to like the movie, it got to the point, that I just didn’t care what the actors are doing or what happened.  Instead of watching the screen, I kept looking at the timer in hope the movie would end. - Gothic is less than an hour and a half, but is seemed like it lasted forever.

Gee, this almost make it sound like I don’t like anything, but the movies regarding that weekend, as well as the monsters invented in the literary competition, get MUCH better.

10:45 Haunted Summer

Haunted Summer (or as Poe might say in a Richmond accent - HANTED  /SUMMER from 1988 covers pretty much the same material, but is a far superior movie. The movie has Laura Dern - from the original Jurassic Park - as Claire Clairmont.  The movie has a beautiful look - even its outdoor scenes look like muted paintings of the period. To start with, the conversations are far more realistic than those in Gothic - you could easily imagine a group of people such as those in Haunted Summer sitting around talking about science, literature, philosophy and other subjects while they party.  And the character playing Lord Byron, Phillip Anglim, comes across as a real person who can be charming, while also being insulting.  And the character of Dr. Polidori is extremely sympathetic - in Gothic, Dr. Polidori is irritating.  In contrast to the frequently cheesy segments of Gothic, Haunted Summer has some extremely powerful lines.  Because the characters are more fully developed, they come across as human beings with feelings.

In a highly memorable scene, Lord Byron, Shelley, Mary, Claire, and a jealous Dr. Polidari are floating in a boat across Lake Geneva with Shelley and Lord Byron reciting some of their greatest works - it makes you stop and realize - Shelley and Byron really WERE great writers.  Shelley and Byron also casually talk about their political philosophies and world views - a lot more interesting than it might sound.

Though apparently Gothic and Haunted Summer have fictionalized aspects, the elements of Haunted Summer seem to be far more historically accurate. The scary parts in Haunted Summer are not there just for shock value and are far more logical - they creep up on you slowly - which makes them all the more creepy.

I don’t think I ever looked at the timer to see how much was left in the movie while it was playing - it was that interesting.  And I just might watch Haunted Summer again.

12:50 Rowing with the Wind

The last full movie - I’ll get to a television episode later - on the list for today that is set in the Villa Diodati is a 1988 Spanish movie written and directed by Gonlzalo Suarez.  The movie won several Goya awards in Spain.  Translated into English, the movie is called Rowing with the Wind.

Now when I began this podcast, I resolved to try and watch any movie I reviewed - as much as possible.  But the Indianapolis library did not have Rowing with the Wind- though they did have Gothic and The Haunted Summer either in DVD format or online.  And I wasn’t about to request that the library buy Rowing with the Wind, because I didn’t know how long might take to come in - or if it was available - but mainly because I did not want to shall we say  “overstay my welcome” or become burdensome by requesting too many titles that no one else is interested in.  And the lowest price on Amazon was roughly 30.00 for a movie less than 90 minutes.  I had to stop and take stock of the fact that I have been spending way too much money for books about Edgar Allan Poe.  And  to be honest, I didn’t exactly relish the idea of watching another movie about the Villa Diadatti.  But I thought I would include it in this episode to be  more comprehensive.  The movie not only covers the literary competition Mary Shelley where Mary came up with the idea for her novel Frankenstein, but apparently deals with Mary imagining the monster becoming real.  A great deal of tragedy occurs regarding those around her, and she sees the creature of her imagination as the cause.

Though on the positive the movie seemed to have gotten very good reviews on Amazon, and does have Elizabeth Hurley (in her second movie) as Claire Claireborne. Lord Byron is played by - get ready for this - by non other than a young Hugh Grant.  He would be perfect for the role  - alternatively snobbish, flirtatious, serious, childlike, seductive, in the excerpts online, and he comes across as perfect for the part. Hugh Grant as Lord Byron can clearly communicate emotions by just moving an eye or the corner of his mouth.

In the show notes, I put a link to a youtube video of an excerpt from Running with the Wind - just to let you know that it is out there. 

Just from a few clips of the movie, I suspect that it is closer in tone to Haunted Summer (good) than Gothic (a mess.) Maybe I will  order Rowing with the Wind someday, but right now I decided to put a personal moratorium on ordering more books and movies.  Though after looking at the excerpt on youtube, I just might - no - George

I think I will go back and rewatch Hugh Grant in the British romantic drama, Morris from the libray. The movie was filmed in the the 80’s, and in it a young Hugh Grant plays a student at Cambridge who has a gay lover at the school - just like Lord Byron did at Cambridge - well, actually Lord Byron had several lovers, and the culture for gay people was even worse then - if that can be imagined. Morris - some people might say Maurice - is beautiful filmed with great acting, and, in my opinion, one of the best movies regarding gay issues ever made.

17:01  Doctor Who and the Haunting of the Villa Diodati

But when it come to recent depictions of the events at the Villa Diodati,  I”ll take Doctor Who.

Speaking of Doctor Who (how’s that for a planned seque)

You know, I am using Voice Control on my computer now and have dictation on. Sometimes I read back to myself what I typed to see how it sounds or gif makes any sense  - and if I don’t turn voice dictation off by saying Go to Sleep, voice dictation types my verbal musings.  I’ll say “Don’t type that!  I’m just THINKING aloud.”  And voice control types “Don’t type that! I’m just THINKING aloud.”

Anyway, getting back to Doctor Who. -

18:01 Use (or non use) of audio clips

The episode is called “The Haunting of the Villa Diodora’  First - a little deviation here - in doing this podcast, I decided NOT to never audio clips that were not in the public domain - Buzzsprout warns against audio clips the episode begins appropriately enough with thunder and lightning and a character who we later learned is Lord Byron saying I've never known a year as dank , and there is just too much danger in using an audio clip to which you do not have the rights. And of course, if I ever wanted to do anything  commercial with this podcast, then a lawyer could make the argument that that clip from Disney, for example, was being used by me for commercial purposes.  Supposedly Disney has even sued nursing homes for showing Disney videos, so I wouldn’t depend on the “goodness of their hearts” when money is involved.  After all, Disney is a business - a HUGE business. One could use the “fair use” argument, but that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t be taken to court. - Oh, there is a good chance you would win, but who wants that kind of expense? 

Now I have used clips in the public domain in this podcast - such as the voice of Edwin Booth - which is from the 19th century.  Some say media from before 1923 are ok to use in the United States - others countries say 100 years after the death of the author.  And since almost anything on the internet ends up going international, I would use the 100 years after the death of the author rule.  Of course, there are those sticky rules where the famous ancestor’s descendants own the rights to his or her works. But anything by Poe or the Romantic poets should be ok to use.  And another great source is the United States government - in Episode 26, I used a section from a speech by then President Clinton - as well as words by Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health (or NIH), and Anthony Faucci’s boss.  The NIH is considered a part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and as such, Dr. Collins is a government employee.  In other words, his words in that speech are in the public domain.  It might be interesting to go back and listen to that speech because at the time, COVID was especially widespread, and Dr. Collins was one of those who was working night and day i n trying to develop a vaccine.

I know there are very good podcasts out there that do use current music and spoken audio clips under the fair use clause - but I don’t want to risk it.  Being taken to court is just not worth it.  In any case, they say it is better to contact a lawyer - I know it might be expensive, but it is better than being sued.

21:19  Now finally back to Dr. Who -

The Dr. Who episode is number eight from season twelve, and appropriately begins with thunder and lightning. I have watched it several times - it seems that each time I see something new.  And the BBC must realize that they have quite a fan base, because there are several transcripts of Dr. Who episodes on the web - all, of course, say they are for education and entertainment purposes only.  Still, I use an online script of the shows to keep my bearings, and try to stick to using exact phrases that Byron and Shelley used in the 19th century - making them public domain.

Back to Dr. Who -

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

The episode begins appropriately with thunder and lighting, and a character (who we later learn is Lord Byron) saying, “I’ve never known air as dank and frigid.”  Lord Byron then asks if anyone would like to hear a ghost story, and what would they like to hear”
The character of Mary Shelley replies, “Something to awaken thrilling horror. To make us dread to look around. To curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.

They hear insistent knocking at the door, and finally Byron says they have nothing to be afraid of, and throws open the door.   The Thirteeth Doctor, Graham O’Brien, Ryan Sinclair, and Yasmin Khan are outside in the pouring rain and screaming in terror together at the people outside. At the same time the characters of Byron, Shelley, Polidori, Mary, and Claire are inside the Villa Diodati also screaming - but at the people outside.

In a clever little bit of stagecraft, the doctor holds out the psychic paper in the form of a calling card. (Now in case you are not a Doctor Who fan - a psychic paper is a blank white card with special properties - when shown to someone, that person could only see whatever the owner wanted them to see written on it.  By the way, it is not 100% foolproof.  A psychic paper did not work at all in a Dr. Who episode involving William Shakespeare - he was just too much of a genius.  And I doubt that it would have worked on Edgar Allan Poe - but I digress.)   The clever thing in the Via Diodatti episode is that the psychic paper does not work - the Doctor routinely holds it out, realizes it is not working, and says that it might need to be blow-dried with all the rain falling.  And something very strange really IS happening with the house.

You see, the doctor is taking Graham, Ryan, and Yaz back in time in 1816 to Lake Geneva to be there while Mary Shelley is inspired to write Frankenstein - tho she warns the group not to say anything about Frankenstein. I guess she did not want to interfere with history.  Not surprisingly, Lord Byron suggests that they each write a horrifying ghost story.

Percy is soon missing and leaves strange marks on the walls of his room.  Strange events start occurring, such as furniture and paintings moving.  Lord Byron suggests that it is just a ghost, but the Doctor becomes more and more suspicious.  The group sees a supernatural figure that Dr, Who recognizes as a something moving through time - it then manifests itself as a half-converted Cyberman.  Dr. Who goes off to confront the Cyberman, who was sent back in time to look for the Cyberium.  And no, the Cyberium is not a person, but a liquid metal with the collective knowledge of the Cybermen.  The Doctor and the Villa Diodati group find Percy Shelley hiding in the cellar.  The Doctor finds out that Shelley is possessed by the Cyberium - something that is shown in a flashback of Shelley reaching into what was probably Lake Geneva.  The Doctor then tricks the Cyberium into leaving Shelley’s body.

The doctor and her companions then leave for the future. There are quite a few twists and turns in the plot, and I don’t want to spoil it for you if you have not seen the episode.

At one point, Lord Byron quotes She walks in beauty, like the night.
The doctor continues the poem - Of cloudless climes and starry skies.
And Lord Byron replies with: “I’m intensely flattered you're familiar with my work.”

At another point, the Cyberman character quotes from Queen Mab, book 2
“There’s not one atom of yon Earth, but once living man.”   

In Episode 47 - Can Spring Be Far Behind I briefly discusses Queen Mab and pointed out that this is not the Queen Mab of Shakespeare - the fairy queen who flies over sleepers and gives birth to their dreams.  Percy Shelley used a far more complex description of Queen Mab.  Shelley portrayed the fairy queen in a political epic in which Queen Mab enters a time and space journey to reveal the ideal nature of humanity’s potential - what humankind should and can be.
In sentiments that could have come right out of Edgar Allan Poe, the Doctor gives an impassioned speech regarding Shelley. She emphasizes that words matter and are an essential part of our existence as humans.

The Haunting of the Villa Diodati ends with Lord Byron reading these 12 lines to a seated audience from his poem Darkness.

27:46 Darkness (and ecology)

The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless -
A lump of death - a chaos of hard clay.
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge -
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expir'd before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them - She was the universe.   

Many scholars, have claimed that the Romantic writers, especially Lord Byron, were the first full-fledged ecological writers in the Western literary tradition.  In Darkness and Climate Change, an article by Scott Becker in The Romantic Poets Blog of Hamilton College, the poem Darkness is a dream-like vision of the end of days.  In his poem, Lord Byron describes man burning its civilizations in an attempt just to survive. We are gluttonously consuming resources today and at the same time extinguishing any hope of long term happiness just to make our lives a bit more convenient.  Mr. Becker writes that he doubts that this is a mainstream interpretation - one that probably wasn’t as true in 1816, but unfortunately is becoming more and more of a reality.

29:52 Time travel as a genre

I think that this Episode of Doctor Who conveys the spirit and sensibility of the Villa Diodatti to the point that it should be included with strictly so-called historical accounts.  After all, we were not there - we may know the results, but not exactly what was said.  The Haunting of the Villa Diatotti Dr. Who episdode does a great job of depicting what it must have been like - the technology is so advanced in this episode of Doctor Who, and the Gothic-like sets and lighting take your breath away.  Obviously, the events involving Dr. Who and her fellow-time travelers are purely fictional, but are set against the lives of some very progressive and creative historical figures, and make those historical characters seem more alive.The constant interplay of the futuristic characters and individuals from the past brings out the basic human qualities of both - a characteristic of the best examples of time travel stories.

In conclusion, I’d like to say a little bit about the structure of this podcast - yes there is one - but it doesn’t always come across  as well as I wo oe, I considered time travel - that I would somehow go back in time to have the character of Poe speak about his life and circumstances.

There are many excellent examples of outstanding time travel literature - for example - in Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, one or Poe’s contemporaries, the hero falls asleep on a mountain and wakes up twenty years later. He realizes he has been forgotten, his wife has died, and his daughter is no longer a child.

And in A Christmas Carol - Ebeneezer Scrooge is haunted by the ghost of his former business partner.  The second ghost may be in the present, but first and third ghosts take him to the past and future, respectively.  A Christmas Carol is perhaps the most popular time travel story every written. The content and style are handled so masterfully that the contrasts between periods is handed seamlessly.  The events all blend together to make Scrooge the miser that he has become at the beginning of the story.  Views of the past show why and a view of the future shows what he may become.

In the classic novel Slaughter House Five, Indianapolis native Kurt Vonnegut wrote a novel about a man who randomly travels through time, jumping from one era to another without any apparent order.  Like many of Poe’s works (such as The Black Cat and especially The Tell Tale Heart)  Vonnegut’s story is told by an unreliable narrator who may not be very credible.  Slaughter House Five begins the novel with “All of this happened, more or less.”  The narrator has been a university student and newspaper reporter, and he writes about a man named Billy Pilgrim who believes he was held in an alien zoo and has frequently traveled through time.  The novel ends with a eloquent anti-war message - using time travel and short, often repetitious sentences, to express complex ideas.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.L. Rowling has a huge course load at Hogwarts - so she uses what is called a Time-Turner to help her do all that extra work.

In the novel 11/22/63 by Stephen King, a man travels through a time portal in an attempt to go back into the past and prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

And even Edgar Allan Poe wrote a lesser known short involving time travel that this podcast will later discuss in detail.  The story, A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, is the only work that Poe wrote with the state of Virginia as a background. A Tale of the Ragged Mountains has a hero who claims to have been transported back to the 1780s.  But typical of Poe, by the end of the story, you are not so sure.

35:07 Podcast structure (time travel versus ghost)

There are so many others - time travel is a very popular genre. And I have always gone out of my way to read books and see movies about Time Travel.  So when I first thought about how to organize Celebrate Poe, I thought time travel might be a natural for the podcast.

I read an semi-interesting book called In Bed with Lord Byron - I definitely would not call it great literature - where a girl goes back in time to fall in love with Mr. “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” but it just didn’t cut it for me.  I admire Dr. Who - but the show and now franchise has a tremendous amounts of resources to work with - BBC money and incredibly talented actors such as David Tennant. Ok, if you are a Dr, Who fan you probably have your favorite actor - but the fact is that it seems everyone associated with Dr. Who does some pretty good stuff. 

In other words, my trying to use time travel as a vehicle ended up causing too many problems. Mainly, it just didn’t flow or seem convincing.

Now, when I was living in West Virginia and traveling around the state as Poe for the Humanities Council, I was working as a guide at Fallingwater in Pennslyvania - about an hour away by car from Morgantown where I lived.
But that did no seem so far when I thought about the three hour plus commutes to Washington DC that some people who live outside the Beltway have.  Also, Fallingwater was in a rural area, and getting to it was a beautiful drive.

Stick with me - there’s a point to this.

Anyway, I ended up doing a one man stage show in a huge old fashioned theatre about 100 years old near Fallingwater.  I called the play Celebrate Poe and was the ghost of Poe - this way I could talk about events that occurred after Poe’s death, and subjects that he might not have discussed - such as his writing style, comparisons with modern authors, and films and music based on his life and works.  So when I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a format - I realized that I already had it.  It was right there in front of me.

Do a detailed extension of Celebrate Poe - Instead of a 90 minute show, I had enough material for hundreds of hours. And dividing the information up lent itself far more to a podcast.  So I came up with the idea of the Ghost of Mr. Poe coming to me and talking about his life.  I would use mainly primary sources or weave information by Poe scholars in and out of the narrative. And I thought it was very nice that Mr. Poe invited Mr. Dickens and Mr. Shakespeare to also be guest ghosts in the future. The ghost format also allowed me to express my opinions and tell personal stories that hopefully are relevant. So thanks for listening to Celebrate Poe, and join me on our journey as we delve even deeper to learn about America’s Shakespeare - with a few surprises.

38:41 Sources and outro

Sources for this episode include the motion pictures Gothic and Haunted Summer, and The Haunting of the Villa Diodati, - a television episode from the twelfth season of the BBC’s Doctor Who, as well as The Complete Works of Percy Byshhe Shelley by Percy Shelley, The Complete Works of George Gordon Lord Byron by Lord Byron, and Darkness and Climate Change by Scott Becker from The Romantic Poets, a Blog of Hamilton College.

Why not visit my podcast web site at celebratepoe.buzzsprout.com - click on the episode you want to learn more about to see its show notes and a transcript. 

The next episode is called Shelley at the Movies. I plan to deal with the excellent Mary Shelley bio-pic - an excellent movie that includes Mary’s relationship with Percy Shelley, the time at the Villa Diodati, and her publication of Frankenstein. I didn’t have time to get to all the Byron-related movies in this episode, so I am also going to review the excellent BBC two-parter of Byron. And then I would like to end with a review of an awesome British stage production of Frankenstein. 

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.