A long excerpt of E.J. Trelawny’s visceral account of the death and cremation of Percy Shelley

After the fire was well-kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was poured over Shelley’s dead body than he had consumed during his life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and the heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the back of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the furnace, the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a cauldron, for a very long time.

The heart, which largely survived the fire, was later delivered to Mary Shelley.

Reporting his death, the Tory newspaper The Courier wrote: “Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned, now he knows whether there is a God or not.”