Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Born on August 4, 1792—the year of the Terror in France—Percy Bysshe Shelley (the “Bysshe” from his grandfather, a peer of the realm) was the son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley... The life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley exemplify English Romanticism in both its extremes of joyous ecstasy and brooding despair. Romanticism’s major themes—restlessness and brooding, rebellion against authority, interchange with nature, the power of the visionary imagination and of poetry, the pursuit of ideal love, and the untamed spirit ever in search of freedom—all of these Shelley exemplified in the way he lived his life and live on in the substantial body of work that he left the world after his legendary death by drowning at age 29. Shelley was the husband of the Romantic writer Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, which exemplified the Gothic style in the Romantic period, and the friend of Lord Byron.

Poetry Foundation, 2021

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