Shelley's Ghost

This is Shelley's copy of Sophocles, found, so the story went, in the trouser pocket of his drowned body, but more likely from the trunk of his belongings rescued from the wreck of the Don Juan. It was one of the things on display in 'Shelley's Ghost', the exhibition at the Bodleian Library exploring the way the Shelley family attempted to shape their own and the public's perception of the poet's memory and legacy. There was a nice mixture of memorabilia and literary remains (it's not easy to make 19th-century letters on their own interesting display material), although I did find the layout and scheme of the display rather confusing ('Did you work out which way to go around it?' asked Dr Bones. However, it could have done with a bit of increase in the emotional volume. I got the impression that the life and death of Shelley hung over his family for decades afterwards and the relics are evidence of an intense, lasting relationship with the dead. We're told that it was Shelley's daughter-in-law, rather than his straightforward son and heir Sir Percy Florence Shelley, who became entranced by his memory. Why was this? What about this woman made her so determined to champion her long-dead father-in-law's case? Or was it something about Mary?
What also comes across remarkably is that this was a family already memorialising itself before Shelleys death had even occurred. More objects are constructed from snippets of human hair - Bysshe's, Mary's, John Keats's, and other friends' - than I could easily count. Was this conscious creation of faintly creepy keepsakes common among people of that class and time, or was it just the Romantics who went in for it so heavily?
The most moving item was surely Mary's notebook of thoughts she kept after Shelley's death, titled 'The Journal of Sorrow, begun 1822. But for my Child it could not end too soon'. Anguished, angry, desperate and hysterical reflections and outbursts scratched on thick paper, scrawled, underscored or crossed out. Why did she not destroy it? Did she consciously intend anything to be done with it?