Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Autograph letter signed : Dover, to William Godwin, 1816 May 3.

BIB_ID
137157
Accession number
MA 406.6
Creator
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822.
Display Date
1816 May 3.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909.
Description
1 item (5 p., with address) ; 22.2 cm
Notes
Address panel with evidence of a seal and addressed to "Godwin Esq / 41 Skinner Street / London."
Part of a collection of letters from Percy Bysshe Shelley. Items in the collection have been cataloged individually in separate records; see related collection-level record for more information.
See collection files for a description of the letter, probably from the Sotheby's catalogue (May 21, 1890).
Provenance
Sold by Paola Clairmont to H. Buxton Forman (30 July 1879); offered for £35 by Samuel J. Davey, Cat. 31 (1881), lot 3186, p. 63; sale (Sotheby's 21 May 1890, lot 102, p. 35-36) to Barker; sale (Sotheby's 10 April 1895, lot 52, p. 10) to Mason; sale (Sotheby's, 22 July 1901, lot 74, p. 8) to Sabin; purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the dealer Frank T. Sabin in 1909.
Summary
Concerning his financial affairs and his need to leave England for a time.
Concerning his financial affairs, remarking that "the limited condition of my fortune is regretted by me" and regretting that he is unable to send Godwin funds; reporting that the chancery courts decided that Shelley and his father may not touch his grandfather's estate and that Shelley is therefore dependent on his father's charity; discussing attempts to raise funds with a post obit security; determining to leave England "perhaps forever," but noting "I respect you, I think well of you, better perhaps than of any other person whom England contains, you were the philosopher who first awakened, & who still as a philosopher to a very great degree regulate my understanding." Giving his address in Geneva.