Melville House Books

A set of letters written by Percy Bysshe Shelley protesting his expulsion from Oxford for “writing a pamphlet about atheism” has been discovered, and rescued, just before being put up for sale in a ‘car boot sale” in England. According to a BBC wire story, Shelley wrote the letters to Ralph Wedgwood, “a member of the famous pottery family.” The report does not say how Wedgewood was involved in Shelley’s expulsion, nor why Shelley wrote to him. But the letters were “stowed away in a dusty trunk . . . at a house in Norbury, south-west London by one of Wedgwood’s descendants.” The letters will be auctioned off by Christie’s in June.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.