ABSTRACT
A short time after the publication of his Shelley Papers in 1833 (see previous headnote in this volume), Medwin was already collecting materials for a more substantial biography. In 1835 he was in Marlow, interviewing those who had met Shelley when he had stayed there in 1817 (see Lovell, Captain Medwin, pp. 282–3). He left for Germany two years later, and thoughts of a Shelley biography must have given way to kinds of writing that his impecuniousness forced on him: between 1837 and 1847 he wrote tales and sketches for English periodicals, and in 1840 became German correspondent for The Atheneum. In 1842 he published a novel, Lady Singleton. By this time he had begun a relationship with Caroline de Crespigny, an Englishwoman living in Germany. She was the daughter of the Bishop of Norwich and a minor poet. She was also married, though separated from her husband who was in a debtor’s prison. Medwin’s biographer, Ernest Lovell, notes that in both his novel and his Life of Shelley ‘he penned bitter and violent outbursts against the state of the divorce laws’ (Captain Medwin, p. 308).
