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Abstract
This article explores an underlying intertextual correlation between Patrick Branwell Brontë’s (1817–1848) juvenilia character Northangerland and the life of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). Derived from a published narrative available to the Brontë family, scholarship on Branwell’s youthful writing often centres on imagination, his reading of Lord George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, yet it is from these same textual sources that this paper demonstrates how Brontë likely encountered Shelley. Concerning atheism and adultery, the Shelleyan narrative echoed in Brontë’s portrayal of Northangerland allowed readers to admire Shelley for his poetic talent, but equally show him to be a paradoxical and somewhat scandalous character. Elucidating the textual correlation between Branwell Brontë’s juvenilia and Shelley’s life provides a fuller understanding of the Brontë siblings’ work and the relevance of Percy Shelley to Branwell’s early writing.
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