Edward John Trelawny (13 November 1792 – 13 August 1881) was a British biographer, novelist and adventurer who is best known for his friendship with the Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.

Trelawny joined the cause of the Greek Revolutionary Odysseas Androutsos and helped to provide him with additional arms.

[1] His father, Charles Trelawny-Brereton (a descendant of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, 2nd Baronet, who married Mary, daughter of Sir Edward Seymour, 2nd Baronet, a descendant of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset) was a British military officer who retired after reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel.

[7] The recorded history of his family dated back to the reign of Edward the Confessor and included many prominent citizens.

[6] Trelawny's parents regarded their children as potential sinners and frequently used harsh measures to try to instill a sense of discipline in them.

[9] As an adult, Edward Trelawny often told stories about his childhood that focused on his early willingness to take confrontational positions and conceal things from others.

[12] At the age of eight Charles Brereton decided to send Edward to live at the Seyer school, which was located two miles from their home in Bristol at that time.

Trelawny later claimed that his father had resisted sending him to the school for some time due to its cost, but decided to enroll him after he caught him stealing apples from an orchard in the back yard.

[14] He was expelled from the school after two years due to violent behaviour towards teachers as well as starting fires after being confined in his room as punishment.

[47] In early 1822 he travelled to Pisa to meet Edward Ellerker Williams and his wife Jane, Thomas Medwin, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron.

[50] In their age, class origin, and preferences, Trelawny resembled Percy Shelley, whose attitude toward authority figures he began to emulate.

"[53] Trelawny was a figure of great interest to these Romantic friends, for his lack of wealth and education[54] was offset by the adventurous experiences that he had lived through, and which Byron had only written about.

Descriptions of his adventures often included duels and romance, such as his marrying an Arab girl name Zella who was later poisoned by a jealous rival.

[60][61] Shelley and Edward Williams had wanted to begin sailing for some time, and Trelawny used his naval experience to help them make plans.

[62][63] After Shelley and Williams had constructed their boat, the Don Juan, Trelawny was hired by Byron to be the Captain of his vessel, the Bolivar.

For the next several days, he frequently met with members of the Italian Coast Guard and promised them rewards if they were able to find the boat.

[85][86] On the voyage, "Byron sometimes expressed his intention, should his services prove of no avail to Greece, of endeavouring to obtain by purchase, or otherwise, some small island in the South Sea, to which, after visiting England, he might retire for the remainder of his life, and very seriously asked Trelawny if he would accompany him, to which the latter, without hesitation, replied in the affirmative".

[87] After they arrived in the Ionian Islands, Byron decided to stay there for a while in order to consult with the London Greek Committee and other experts regarding the political situation in Greece before proceeding further.

[88] Byron approved of Trelawny's plan to travel deeper into Greece and presented him with a sword and a letter of introduction shortly before he departed.

[115] The soldiers initially hung Whitcomb off a cliff by his ankles as punishment, but Trelawny asked them to stop and they imprisoned the man.

After word spread to England that Trelawny had survived, many of his relatives unsuccessfully lobbied the British government to extract him from Greece.

The British Army Major D'Arcy Bacon learned of his situation and came to an agreement with Mavrokordatos to allow Trelawny to leave Greece.

[130] Trelawny wrote Adventures of a Younger Son in Arcetti while staying in a room that he rented from Charles Armitage Brown.

Writing in the Keats-Shelley Journal of 1956, Anne Hill concluded that "the proportion of truth to fiction in Adventures of a younger son turns out to be small, not more than one tenth."

After he separated from his wife in Usk he sold a large amount of the furniture and books and held a well-attended open house for villagers to come in and buy his possessions.

[164] Trelawny became friends with several artists and writers, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Joseph Boehm, Edward Lear, and Richard Edgcumb.

[169] Trelawny was then widely received in society[170] and met Benjamin Disraeli at a meeting that was held about possibly building a statue for Lord Byron.

[175] As he grew older, Trelawny's guests noted that he told them amazing stories about himself that he purported to be true, such as meeting with Captain Morgan and circumnavigating the globe.

He had purchased this plot in 1822 at the time he had arranged for Shelley's ashes to be reburied in a more suitable site within the Protestant Cemetery.

[196] Besides being the subject of numerous biographies, Trelawny is one of the primary characters in the novella "A Time to Cast Away Stones" (Chapbook 2009), collected in The Bible Repairman and Other Stories [Tachyon, 2011] and Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers [Baen, 2017]) and the novel Hide Me Among the Graves (William Morrow, 2012), both by Tim Powers, as well as playing a major role in Shelley's Boat, by Julian Roach (Harbour Books, 2005).