Percy Bysshe Shelley Drowns with Don Juan
Poets involved
What happened
Percy Bysshe Shelley's sailing boat Don Juan sank during a storm in the Gulf of La Spezia, Italy, on 8 July 1822. Shelley, Edward Williams and their boatboy Charles Vivian drowned while returning from Livorno. Shelley's body was later cremated on the beach near Viareggio.
Literary impact
The wreck abruptly ended one of the central poetic careers of English Romanticism and shaped subsequent elegies, biographies and literary pilgrimage. The boat's provocative name linked Shelley's death with Byron, whose poem Don Juan was then redefining the possibilities of satirical narrative verse.
Source: Wikipedia
