“Something must be done”: Shelley, Hemans, and the Flash of Revolutionary Female Violence

On 9 June 1821, under “Literary Intelligence,” Literary Gazette announced that the Royal Society of Literature prize has been awarded to “a lady, of celebrity in the Literary world—Mrs. HEMANS; who has, we understand, produced a beautiful poem … likely to add to her fame.” Just below was news that “The publisher of Shelley’s Queen Mab, has been indited by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It is dreadful to think, that for the chance of a miserable pecuniary profit, any man would become the active agent to disseminate principles so subversive of the happiness of Society.” ¹ The fellowship of Felicia Hemans’s fame with Percy Shelley’s infamy was not the accident of this Gazette. The poets had a long interest in each other—though not without ambivalence.