Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Letter to Lord Ellenborough

Mark Sandy (University of Durham)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University), Emily Rohrbach (University of Durham)

Domains

Political Science

Dates

First circulation or publication 1812

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Essays/ Lectures (any)
Non-Fiction
- Letter(s)
Non-fictional prose

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

His defence of Daniel Isaac Eaton in

A Letter to Lord Ellenborough

is one of Shelley's most significant early literary works in which he establishes himself as a champion of free speech and the oppressed. The radical publisher Eaton had endeavoured to defend himself on the grounds that his beliefs were deistic and not atheistic, but On 15 May1812 he received a severe sentencing of eighteen months and a monthly pillorying for the duration of his term at Newgate Prison. The addressee of Shelley's epistle, Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough, had presided over the trial and prosecution of Mr Eaton, where a prejudiced jury found him guilty of “blasphemous libel” for printing part three of Thomas Paine's

Age of Reason

(1794-6).

In A Letter to Lord Ellenborough, Shelley's initial line of

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

904 words

Citation: Sandy, Mark. "A Letter to Lord Ellenborough". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7176, accessed 21 November 2024.]