This provocative study assesses at length and in detail the validity and significance of the claim, first made in 1863, that Shelley suffered throughout his life from a youthful contraction of venereal disease. The authors have undertaken vigourous research and consulted little-known medical works of the period 1780 1830 (including a number by Shelley's own doctors), and have interwoven their examination with a description of early nineteenth-century attitudes towards venereal disease (which parallel in some respects present-day fears raised by the threat of AIDS). The book is not, however,...