Percy Bysshe Shelley

Literature / Writer's Datebook: August 4

 

Brief biography of English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of England's finest Romantic poets. He was also a novelist and essayist, contemporary of John Keats, and husband of Mary Godwin Shelley, of Frankenstein fame. Percy Shelley is known for Prometheus Unbound.

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born into a wealthy family, in Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex on August 4, 1792, three years older than John Keats, and another one of finest English Romantic poets. He was educated at Eton College, where his radical views on politics and religion earned him the nickname 'Mad Shelley" and later "Eton Atheist." While still at Eton and aged just 18, he published his first book, a gothic horror novel called Zastrozzi. He attended Oxford University, where he read radical authors like William Godwin, and behaved in an eccentric way. A year later, he was expelled from the University for his anti-Christian writings.

That same year 19-year-old Shelley shocked his family even more by secretly marrying 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook. This was the start of Shelley's adventurous life and restless travels. He had two children with Harriet.  Three years later Shelley fell in love and eloped with another 16-year old, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Harriet drowned herself, and Shelley married his new love, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She was known as Mary Shelley, famous for her masterpiece Frankenstein.  Mary gave birth to a daughter who died prematurely, but had a son William Shelley, beloved of his father.

The Shelleys moved around constantly. His reputation grew and met John Keats and William Hazlitt. They travelled around Europe and lived in  different towns in England. Shelley's poems, such as Alastor and 'Ozymandias,' overflow with intense emotion and radical ideas.  

In 1818, Shelley and Mary left England to live in Italy. He completed some of his greatest poetry there, including his masterpiece Prometheus Unbound. While on a short voyage along the Italian coast, Shelley's small sailboat was caught in a storm. He drowned on July 8, 1822, aged 29. At a young age, Percy Bysshe Shelley had written poetry that established him as one of the greatest English Romantic poets.

 

Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Zastrozzi  1810

Queen Mab  1813

The Revolt of Islam  1818

The Cenci  1819

Prometheus Unbound  1820

The Triumph of Life  1824  (published after he died)

The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe, Poetry Book

 

Poetry

A Lament

A New World

A Widow Bird Sate Mourning for her Love

Adonais

Alastor (The Spirit of Solitude)

Asia: From Prometheus Unbound

England in 1819

Feelings of a REpublican on the Fall of Bonaparte

Invocation

Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

Love's Philosophy

Mont Blank

Music, When Soft Voices Die

Ode to the West Wind

On a Poet's Lips I Slept

One Word is Too Often Profaned

Ozymandias

Prince Athanase

Sont To the Men of England

Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples

The Daemon of the World

The Indian Serenede

The Invitation

The Revolt of Islam

The Waning Moon

 The Witch of Atlas

Time

To a Lady, With a Guitar

To Night

To the Moon

To Wordsworth

When the Lamp is Shattered 

 

Image Credit.

Percy Bysshe Shelley. NNDB / Public Domain.

 

Resources:

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby, Cambridge. (1993)

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse.  (1994)

Percy Bysshe Shelley / Online-Literature.com

 

(c) August 2008. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.