July 8

In literary history

• 1822Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned at twenty-nine in a squall off the Italian coast, Keats in his pocket. Trelawny claimed to have snatched the heart from the cremation fire on the beach and given it to Mary, who kept it in her desk until she died.

Writers born on July 8

• Jean de La Fontaine (1621)

The Daily Canon for July 8

Life Studies by Robert Lowell (1959).