Shelley, Percy Bysshe (bĭsh), 1792–1822, English poet, b. Horsham, Sussex. He is ranked as one of the great English poets of the romantic period.

A Tempestuous Life

The son of a prosperous squire, he entered Oxford in 1810, where readings in philosophy led him toward a study of the empiricists and the modern skeptics, notably William Godwin Godwin, William, 1756–1836, English author and political philosopher. A minister in his youth, he was, however, plagued by religious doubts and gave up preaching in 1783 for a literary career.
..... Click the link for more information. . In 1811 he and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 1792–1862, friend and biographer of Percy Bysshe Shelley . He was dismissed in 1811 from Oxford for defending Shelley's atheism.
..... Click the link for more information. published their pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, which resulted in their immediate expulsion from the university. The same year Shelley eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, by whom he eventually had two children, Ianthe and Charles.

Supported reluctantly by their fathers, the young couple traveled through Great Britain. Shelley's life continued to be dominated by his desire for social and political reform, and he was constantly publishing pamphlets. His first important poem, Queen Mab, privately printed in 1813, set forth a radical system of curing social ills by advocating the destruction of various established institutions.

In 1814 Shelley left England for France with Mary Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin. During their first year together they were plagued by social ostracism and financial difficulties. However, in 1815 Shelley's grandfather died and left him an annual income. Laon and Cynthna appeared in 1817 but was withdrawn and reissued the following year as The Revolt of Islam; it is a long poem in Spenserian stanzas that tells of a revolution and illustrates the growth of the human mind aspiring toward perfection.

After Harriet Shelley's suicide in 1816, Shelley and Mary officially married. In 1817 Harriet's parents obtained a decree from the lord chancellor stating that Shelley was unfit to have custody of his children. The following year Shelley and Mary left England and settled in Italy. By this time their household consisted of their own three children and Mary's half-sister Claire Claremont and her daughter Allegra (whose father was Lord Byron). On July 8, 1822, Shelley was drowned while sailing in the Bay of Spezia, near Lerici.

Poetry

Shelley composed the great body of his poetry in Italy. The Cenci, a tragedy in verse exploring moral deformity, was published in 1819, followed by his masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound (1820). In this lyrical drama Shelley poured forth all his passions and beliefs, which were modeled after the ideas of Plato. Epipsychidion (1821) is a poem addressed to Emilia Viviani, a young woman whom Shelley met in Pisa and with whom he developed a brief but close friendship.

His great elegy, Adonais (1821), written in memory of Keats Keats, John, 1795–1821, English poet, b. London. He is considered one of the greatest of English poets.

The son of a livery stable keeper, Keats attended school at Enfield, where he became the friend of Charles Cowden Clarke, the headmaster's son, who
..... Click the link for more information. , asserts the immortality of beauty. Hellas (1822), a lyrical drama, was inspired by the Greek struggle for independence. His other poems include Alastor (1816) and the shorter poems "Ode to the West Wind," "To a Skylark," "Ozymandias," "The Indian Serenade," and "When the Lamp Is Shattered."

Assessment

Most of Shelley's poetry reveals his philosophy, a combination of belief in the power of human love and reason, and faith in the perfectibility and ultimate progress of man. His lyric poems are superb in their beauty, grandeur, and mastery of language. Although Matthew Arnold Arnold, Matthew, 1822–88, English poet and critic, son of the educator Dr. Thomas Arnold .

Arnold was educated at Rugby; graduated from Balliol College, Oxford in 1844; and was a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford in 1845.
..... Click the link for more information. labeled him an "ineffectual angel," 20th-century critics have taken Shelley seriously, recognizing his wit, his gifts as a satirist, and his influence as a social and political thinker.

Bibliography

See his complete poetical works, ed. by N. Rogers (2 vol., 1972–74); letters, ed. by F. L. Jones (2 vol., 1964); biographies by E. C. Blunden (rev. ed. 1965), J. O. Fuller (1969), and N. I. White (2 vol., 1940; repr. 1972); studies by N. Rogers (2d ed. 1967), H. Bloom (2d ed. 1969), E. R. Wasserman (1971), K. N. Cameron (1974), C. Tomalin (1980), D. King-Hele (1981), S. M. Sperry (1988), and I. Gilmour (2003); K. N. Cameron and D. H. Reiman, ed., Shelley and His Circle (8 vol., 1961–85).

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Percy Bysshe Shelley, oil painting by Amelia Curran, 1819; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

(credit: Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born Aug. 4, 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, Eng.—died July 8, 1822, at sea off Livorno, Tuscany) English Romantic poet. The heir to rich estates, Shelley was a rebellious youth who was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for refusing to admit authorship of The Necessity of Atheism. Later that year he eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner. He gradually channeled his passionate pursuit of personal love and social justice into poetry. His first major poem, Queen Mab (1813), is a utopian political epic revealing his progressive social ideals. In 1814 he eloped to France with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (see Mary Shelley); in 1816, after Harriet drowned herself, they were married. In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy. Away from British politics, he became less intent on social reform and more devoted to expressing his ideals in poetry. He composed the verse tragedy The Cenci (1819) and his masterpiece, the lyric drama Prometheus Unbound (1820), which was published with some of his finest shorter poems, including “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark.” Epipsychidion (1821) is a Dantean fable about the relationship of sexual desire to spiritual love and artistic creation. Adonais (1821) commemorates the death of John Keats. Shelley drowned at age 29 while sailing in a storm off the Italian coast, leaving unfinished his last and possibly greatest visionary poem, The Triumph of Life.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

(1792–1822) English poet drowned at 30. [Br. Lit.: Harvey, 748]

See : Death, Premature