ABSTRACT
Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881), younger son of a retired lieutenant colonel, began his battle with reality at a very early age. Unhappy at home and at school (he was expelled at the age of ten), he expected to find welcome adventure when his family enrolled him, at the age of eleven, as a volunteer first class in the Royal Navy. In 1812, he was invalided out of the Navy because of wounds he suffered in the invasion of Java. His next venture was marriage, but this first union, which produced two daughters, failed: his wife eloped with her lover. Divorced in 1819, Trelawny left his children behind in England and, with an annual allowance of £300 per annum provided by his father, went to the Continent where he lived first in Paris and then Switzerland. In 1820 he befriended Thomas Medwin and Jane and Edward Williams, who subsequently moved to Pisa and invited Trelawny to join them. He arrived on 14 January 1822, and, already the admirer of Byron’s and P. B. Shelley’s poetry, he quickly became a member of the Pisan circle.
