Note 1 — BOOKS BY EDWARD CARPENTER

I remember very well that my own father (who was born in 1793, that is, one year later than Shelley)—though of active and original mind and quite advanced views—did strongly disapprove of the poet’s ideas, as generally represented and reported, especially on the subject of Marriage. Knowing my father so well, and through him having obtained glimpses of the current public opinion of that period, I appreciate all the more the mental clarity and boldness of the growing boy (for such Shelley was at that time) who so decisively cast aside the conventions that surrounded him at Eton and in his highly respectable home, and walked forth single-minded and unafraid into the great world, and to “dare the unpastured dragon in his den.”