Several brown, jagged-edged fragments of varying sizes encapsulated in a mylar sleeve

Fragments of the skull of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
Human bone, collected 1822
The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

Fragments of the skull of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

It is unclear whether Mary Shelley knew that her friend Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881) had kept what he claimed were pieces of her husband’s skull. The specimens were believed to have been collected after the cremation ceremony, which Trelawny oversaw on the beach where Percy Shelley’s body was found. In one description of the event, Trelawny reported: “The frontal bone of the skull fell off … the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a cauldron, for a very long time.”



Though she did not attend the cremation, Mary Shelley obtained a keepsake from it that she quietly guarded for the rest of her life: remnants of what Percy Shelley’s friends believed was his heart. It had survived the funeral pyre.

: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

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