Edward John Trelawny

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Edward John Trelawny (November 13, 1792–August 13, 1881), biographer. Trelawny entered the Royal Navy aged 13, in time to sail out to Spain to meet the fleet returning victorious from the Battle of Trafalgar. He stayed with the Navy, sailing to Spain, South America, West Africa and India, where he deserted. He joined a band of pirates, with whom he sailed around the Indian Ocean from Madagascar to Indonesia. He married Zela, a girl he rescued in Madagascar, who later died while swimming. Trelawny returned to England, married and had two children. When his wife had an affair, they divorced and Trelawny went travelling again. In Italy he met Byron and Shelley. Trelawny and Shelley were close friends when Shelley drowned, and Trelawny was one of the witnesses at the cremation of his remains. Trelawny's own account recalls the moment when he reached into the pyre and plucked Shelley's heart from his charred remains.

Trelawny took part in the Greek War of Independence with Byron, and he married the sister of one of the insurgent chiefs. In 1833 he travelled to America and tried to swim across Niagara Falls, almost drowning during the attempt. After various such adventures he settled in London, where he was a distinguished figure in society, and enjoyed the reputation of a picturesque, but somewhat imaginative, conversationalist. In his seventies he moved to Sompting in Sussex where he died in 1881 aged 89.

He wrote The Adventures of a Younger Son (1831), a work of striking distinction, and the intensely interesting Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1858), much of which has since been shown to be fabricated. He was a crucial link between the late Romantics and the late Victorians (particularly fostering the Shelley-Swinburne connection). The last surviving Romantic with legitimate ties to the canonical figures, he was buried by the side of Shelley in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome.

[edit] References

Armstrong, Margaret, Trelawny, A Man's Life, Robert Hale, London, 1941
St Clair, William, Trelawny, The Incurable Romancer, Vanguard Press, New York, 1977
Crane, David, Lord Byron's Jackal, The life of Edward John Trelawny, Harper Collins Publishers, London, 1998

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.