Mary Shelley’s Greek Studies: An Unpublished Holograph Letter

Thursday, 22 February 2024, 19.15
Maria Schoina and Eirini Papadopoulou

Meeting ID: 935 2326 8795
Passcode: 848676

This presentation takes as its subject the holograph manuscript of an 1823 letter from Thomas Jefferson Hogg to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Bodleian MS Abinger c. 46, fol.122r-122v) previously known only through its partial publication in Shelley and Mary (ed. Lady Shelley, 4 vols, 1882, iv. 989-90). In the part of the letter published before, Hogg gives advice to Mary Shelley on how to improve her Greek studies, recommending a specific learning methodology. In the omitted part of the letter, which this talk analyses, Hogg exemplifies the method he is proposing using the first five verses of Homerʼs Iliad as a working text. In light of the growing interest in Mary Shelleyʼs classical studies, the publication of the text of the holograph manuscript adds to the letter’s significance as it reveals Hogg’s possible role as her mentor in Greek and offers us clues regarding nineteenth-century education in the classics. 

Maria Schoina is Associate Professor of English Literature in the School of English of AUTh. She holds a PhD from Aristotle University.  Her research interests focus on British Romantic literature, Romantic Philhellenism, gothic literature, travel writing, and the history of the book. She is the author of Romantic ‘Anglo-Italians’: Configurations of Identity in Byron, the Shelleys, and the Pisan Circle (Ashgate 2009; Routledge 2019). Her recent publications include an essay on Mary Shelley’s Greek studies in The Keats-Shelley Review (2019) and a chapter on the Pisan Circle in Byron in Context (Cambridge UP, 2020). She has edited a volume of translations of Romantic poetry in Greek entitled Anthology of Romantic Poets (Ανθολογία Ρομαντικών Ποιητών) (Athens, Kedros, 2021). Forthcoming publications include a chapter on Byron’s reviewers for the Oxford Handbook of Byron (Oxford UP, 2024) and the volume Byron and Translation (co-edited, Liverpool UP, 2024). She is Joint President of the International Association of Byron Societies.

Eirini Papadopoulou is a classical philologist. She graduated from the School of Philology of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received her Master’s degree from the same School in ancient Greek and Latin drama. She completed her doctoral thesis on “Aspects of Silence in Euripides’ Drama” under the supervision of Professor Daniel Iakov. She obtained her PhD in 2016 and published a revised version of her dissertation in 2018. In 2021 she published an annotated translation of the “Germania” of Tacitus. Apart from ancient drama, her interests include research methodology and didactics. She was a research associate of the Centre for the Greek Language and was involved in the editing of the Kriaras Lexicon and the Georgaka archive. She has worked in publishing houses as a copy editor.  Since 2019 she has been teaching at the Arsakeio Lyceum of Thessaloniki.