SOURCE: “Shelley and Erasmus Darwin,” in Shelley Revalued: Essays from the Gregynog Conference, edited by Kelvin Everest, Leicester University Press, 1983, pp. 129-46.

In the following essay, King-Hele argues that Darwin's scientific, religious, and political ideas, as revealed in his poetry, strongly influenced the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

In the 1790s Erasmus Darwin would have needed no introduction: he was rated a great poet and respected as an eminent scientist; and he enjoyed a legendary reputation as a physician. Today, however, Darwin does need some introduction, and paradoxically it is because he was a giant who strode too easily across too many academic fields. He achieved more in a wider range of intellectual disciplines than anyone has done since. This seems to disqualify him from earning academic recognition, because university departments are monocultural and prefer to study historical figures who are themselves monocultural and do not cause...