author
Thomas Jefferson Hogg
1792–1862
A close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, he is remembered as the writer who left one of the earliest and most vivid accounts of the poet's life. His own story mixes law, literary circles, and the unruly energy of early Romanticism.
1 Audiobook
Shelley at Oxford
by Thomas Jefferson Hogg
About the author
Born at Norton in County Durham on May 24, 1792, he studied at Durham School and then at University College, Oxford. There he met Percy Bysshe Shelley, beginning the friendship that would define his place in literary history.
He and Shelley were expelled from Oxford in 1811 after the controversy over The Necessity of Atheism. Hogg later entered the Middle Temple, became a barrister, and also wrote on travel and classical subjects, but he remained best known for his recollections of Shelley and the circle around him.
His major claim to lasting fame is The Life of Shelley (1858), an early biography drawn from personal experience, letters, and anecdote. Although readers and scholars have sometimes debated his judgments and tone, the book remains an important firsthand source on Shelley and on the wider world of English Romantic literature. Hogg died in London on August 27, 1862.