Percy Bysshe Shelley Biography • English Romantic Poet

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a major English poet. He is recognized as one of the greatest romantic poets in history. Percy Bysshe Shelley gained fame after his death. He is also the husband of Mary Shelley, who is the author of Frankenstein. His most notable poems are Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4, 1972. He was born near Sussex. He was the eldest son of Timothy Shelley and Elizabeth Pitford. He had four younger sisters and a brother. Percy Bysshe Shelley attended Eton College. He was suffered mob torment at the hands of older boys. This phenomenon almost took place on a daily basis. This was due to his refusal to work as a servant to his seniors. Percy Bysshe Shelley was nicknamed Mad Shelley. He enrolled in University College, Oxford. It is rumored that he only attended one lecture.

Percy Bysshe Shelley published few gothic novels during his Oxford years. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian. He was expelled from Oxford for writing The Necessity of Atheism. Percy Bysshe Shelley admired the writing of William Goodwin. Percy Bysshe Shelley said he was inspired by him. He eventually became William Goodwin’s apprentice.

After Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from Oxford married Harriet Westbrook. The couple separated due to interference in their life from Harriet’s sister Eliza. Harriet committed suicide by drowning. He later married his mentor’s daughter Mary Wollstonecraft.

In 1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in the Gulf of Spezia. Mary Shelley later claimed the boat was never seaworthy. There are lots of theories behind his death. The theories range from murder to suicide. And it is also said that maybe pirates mistook his boat to be of Lord Byron’s. It is said that Indian poets Rabindranath Tagore and Jibananda Das was influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s writings.

Major works

(1810) Zastrozzi
(1810) Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire
(1810) Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson
(1810 dated 1811) St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian
(1811) Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things
(1811) The Necessity of Atheism
(1812) The Devil’s Walk: A Ballad
(1813) Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem
(1814) A Refutation of Deism: In a Dialogue
(1815) Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude
(1816) The Daemon of the World
(1816) Mont Blanc
(1816) On Death
(1817) Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (text)
(1817) Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century
(1817) The Revolt of Islam, A Poem, in Twelve Cantos
(1817) History of a Six Weeks’ Tour
(1818) Ozymandias (text)
(1818) The Banquet (or The Symposium) by Plato, translation from Greek into English
(1818) Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue (published in 1819)
(1818) Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, October 1818
(1819) The Cenci, A Tragedy, in Five Acts
(1819) Ode to the West Wind (text)
(1819) The Masque of Anarchy
(1819) England in 1819
(1819) A Philosophical View of Reform (published in 1920)
(1819) Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation
(1820) Peter Bell the Third (published in 1839)
(1820) Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts
(1820) To a Skylark
(1820) The Cloud
(1820) Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts
(1820) The Witch of Atlas (published in 1824)
(1821) Adonaïs
(1821) Ion by Plato, translation from Greek into English
(1821) A Defence of Poetry (first published in 1840)
(1821) Epipsychidion
(1822) Hellas, A Lyrical Drama
(1822) Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit (chapbook)
(1822) The Triumph of Life (unfinished, published in 1824)

Essays

The Necessity of Atheism (1811)
Declaration of Rights (1812)
A Letter to Lord Ellenborough (1812)
A Defence of Poetry
A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)
A Refutation of Deism (1814)
On the Vegetable System of Diet (1814–1815; published 1929)
On Love (1818)
On Life (1819)
On a Future State (1815)
On The Punishment of Death
Speculations on Metaphysics (1814)
Speculations on Morals (1817)
On Christianity (incomplete, probably 1817; published 1859)
On the Literature, the Arts and the Manners of the Athenians
On The Symposium, or Preface to The Banquet Of Plato
On Friendship
On Frankenstein (written in 1817; published in 1832)

Short prose works

“The Assassins, A Fragment of a Romance” (1814)
“The Coliseum, A Fragment” (1817)
“The Elysian Fields: A Lucianic Fragment” (1818)
“Una Favola (A Fable)” (1819, originally in Italian)