Grayscale drawing of a woman and man approaching a man in the waves as two other men, one holding a torch, look on

Hilliard (fl. 19th century)
Discovery of Percy Shelley’s Body
Ink wash drawing, squared for transfer, mid-19th century
The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

Discovery of Percy Shelley’s Body

Contrary to the scene depicted in this tableau, neither Mary Shelley nor Lord Byron was present when the corpse of Percy Bysshe Shelley was discovered. According to a gruesome contemporary report, after 10 days at sea, “[t]he face and hands, and parts of the body not protected by the dress, were fleshless.”



A week before his body was recovered, Mary Shelley made a frantic midnight trip to Byron’s Pisan villa in search of her missing husband. That night, Byron later told her, she looked in her distress “more like a ghost than a woman.”

: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

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