Touching the Past: A Day with the Shelley Manuscripts at the Bodleian

Touching the Past:
A Day with the Shelley Manuscripts at the Bodleian

Ancestor Stories · Archives · Shelley · February 2026

Radcliffe Square, Oxford — the Radcliffe Camera in the foreground with the Bodleian Library's Tower of the Five Orders rising behind it

The Bysshe-Shelley family scroll, partially unrolled at the Bodleian Library. Commissioned by Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet — Percy's grandfather — it traces the family's lineage back to William the Conqueror across twenty feet of illuminated vellum.

There are days in genealogical research that stay with you. Days when the names you have spent months tracing through parish registers and census returns suddenly become physical — not entries in a database but objects you can reach out and touch. My visit to the Bodleian Library in Oxford was one of those days.

I went to view the Shelley-Bysshe Collection. What I had not entirely prepared myself for was how personal it would become.

The Scroll

The Shelley-Bysshe Collection is held in the Bodleian's Special Collections reading room — a quiet, carefully controlled environment where you handle documents at a long table under the supervision of a member of staff. Stephen Hebron, who has written extensively on the Shelley manuscripts, was there that day and extraordinarily generous with his time and knowledge.

The first thing brought out was the scroll.

It is difficult to convey the physical impact of a twenty-foot illuminated vellum genealogy being unrolled across a reading room table. Commissioned by Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet (1731–1815) — Percy's grandfather — it traces the Bysshe and Shelley lines back, generation by generation, to William the Conqueror. It is as much a work of art as a genealogical document: the heraldic shields individually painted with the correct arms and charges, the calligraphy meticulous, the decorative border running the full length speaking to the grandeur of the commission.

The Bysshe-Shelley illuminated family scroll unrolled across the full length of a table at the Bodleian Library, showing heraldic shields, calligraphed roundels, and a decorative red and gold border

The scroll unrolled to its full extent across the reading room table — heraldic shields, calligraphed roundels, and a decorative red and gold border running the full length of the vellum.

I was allowed to touch it. Running my fingers along the painted vellum, I was acutely aware that somewhere on this scroll was my own family. My line connects through Sarah Bysshe (1696–1732), born in Burstow, Surrey, who married William Pattenden of West Hoathly and became my 7x great-grandmother. The Bysshe family that Sir Bysshe was so proud to commemorate in this extraordinary object is also my family — and his obsession with establishing the lineage was, in a very real sense, establishing mine too.

Percy Bysshe Shelley's middle name was not a literary affectation. It was his grandmother's maiden name — the same surname, from the same Sussex and Surrey family, that appears in my own tree through the West Hoathly Pattendens. The scroll was, in a very real sense, part of my story too.

If you'd like to read more about this genealogical connection, I've written about it in detail here: A Name in the Tree: Following the Bysshe Line to Percy Shelley →

Frankenstein — In Her Own Hand

Next came the Frankenstein manuscript. Mary Shelley was nineteen years old when she wrote it, and here were the pages to prove it — loose sheets of thin, slightly translucent paper, covered in her flowing, urgent hand, with crossings-out and revisions visible throughout. The corrections make it feel startlingly alive: a young woman's mind moving fast, second-guessing herself, pressing forward.

Page from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manuscript draft, showing her urgent flowing hand and multiple corrections throughout

Mary Shelley's draft — her hand urgent and forward-moving, with corrections woven through the text.

Chapter 7 of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manuscript: 'It was on a dreary night of November' — the creation scene in her own hand, with visible crossings-out and revisions

Chapter 7 — "It was on a dreary night of November..." — the creation scene. The crossings-out and rewrites are visible throughout.

I did not dare touch these. There is something about Mary Shelley's manuscript that feels almost too sacred — the paper on which one of the most influential novels in literary history was first written out, in the hand that wrote it, by a teenager. Looking at the Chapter 7 creation scene with its crossings-out intact, you are watching the monster being born in real time.

On the manuscript

The Bodleian holds the main draft manuscript of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (MS. Abinger c.56 and related volumes), largely in Mary Shelley's hand with some passages in Percy's. It was written in 1816–17, when Mary was 18 and 19 years old, and first published anonymously in 1818. The corrections and revisions in the original bring home the fact — sometimes obscured by the novel's subsequent cultural weight — that this was a young woman working through an idea on paper, not a monument arriving fully formed.

As a professional palaeographer, I spend my working days reading and transcribing historical handwriting. I like to think I can read most things. Sitting in that quiet room at the Bodleian, I found myself simply looking rather than reading — just taking in the fact of it.

Percy's Notebooks

Percy's notebooks were different in character again. Where the Frankenstein manuscript has an almost reverential quality, these are wonderfully chaotic — the working space of a restless, tumbling mind. Poetry shares the page with arithmetic; landscape sketches jostle with draft lines; doodles of mountains and sailing boats appear between stanzas. The red wax seal on one cover is still intact.

Ozymandias written out in full in Percy Shelley's own hand, page 85 of his notebook, with small sketches visible in the margins

Ozymandias in Percy's hand — the whole poem on a single page, numbered 85.

Percy Shelley's notebook showing Alpine landscape sketches alongside a red wax seal on the cover

Alpine landscape sketches — probably from the period of the famous Villa Diodati summer of 1816.

One page stopped me completely. Written in Percy's elegant, slightly italic hand, titled simply Ozymandias, the whole poem was there — with what appeared to be a small landscape sketched alongside it. The thick, textured paper of these notebooks is completely distinctive. When Stephen allowed me to touch them, the surface felt like a direct physical connection across two centuries. You could almost hear a quill scratching across it.

Percy Shelley's notebook showing working notes for The Revolt of Islam, interspersed with calculations and mountain sketches

Working notes for The Revolt of Islam, interspersed with calculations and sketches — the organised chaos of a restless creative mind.

There is something particular about handling the actual physical object that no facsimile or digital reproduction can replicate. As someone whose work is built around the belief that original documents carry meaning that transcription alone cannot fully convey, that afternoon at the Bodleian confirmed everything I believe about why primary sources matter.

A Note on the Collection

The Shelley-Bysshe Collection is held at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. The illuminated family scroll was commissioned by Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet (1731–1815). The Frankenstein draft manuscript (MS. Abinger c.56 and related volumes) is largely in Mary Shelley's hand with some passages in Percy Shelley's, written 1816–17, first published anonymously in 1818. Percy Shelley's notebooks (MS. Shelley adds. series) are among the most significant holdings of Romantic manuscript material in any British institution. Enquiries regarding access to the collection should be directed to the Bodleian Library Special Collections reading room. The personal genealogical connection through Sarah Bysshe (1696–1732) of Burstow, Surrey, is described in detail in A Name in the Tree: Following the Bysshe Line to Percy Shelley.

Filed under: Archives Shelley Bysshe Sussex Bodleian Library Manuscripts Family History