Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Portrait by Alfred Clint (1807-1883), 1819. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 - July 8, 1822) was a major English Romantic poet, regarded by some critics as the finest lyric poet in the English language.

Life

Overview

Shelley, son of Sir Timothy Shelley, was born at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, and educated at Eton and Oxford, from which (for writing and circulating a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism), he was expelled. An immediate result of this was a difference with his father, which was deepened into a permanent breach by his marriage in the following year to Harriet Westbrook, the pretty and lively daughter of a retired innkeeper. The next 3 years were passed in wandering about from place to place in Ireland, Wales, the Lake District, and other parts of the kingdom, and in the composition of Queen Mab (1813), the poet's 1st serious work. Before the end of that period he had separated from his wife, for which various reasons have been assigned, one being her previous desertion of him, and the discovery on his part of imperfect sympathy between them; the principal reason, however, being that he had conceived a violent passion for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter of William Godwin, with whom he eloped to Italy in 1814, and whom he married in 1816, Harriet having drowned herself. The custody of his 2 children, whom he had left with their mother, was refused him by the Court of Chancery. In Switzerland he had made the acquaintance of Byron, with whom he afterwards lived in Italy. Returning to England in 1815 he wrote Alastor (1816), followed by the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Prince Athanase, Rosalind and Helen, and Laon and Cythna, afterwards called the Revolt of Islam (1817). In 1818 he left England never to return, and went to Italy, and in the next 2 years — while Rome — produced his 2 greatest works, the tragedy of The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820). He moved to Venice in 1820 in the company of Byron, and there wrote Julian and Maddalo, a poetic record of discussions between them. Epipsychidion, Hellas, and Adonais (a lament for Keats), were all produced in 1821. After a short residence at Pisa he went to Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia, where he indulged in his favorite recreation of boating, and here on July 8, 1823, he went, in company with a friend, Mr. Williams, on that fatal expedition which cost him his life. His body was cast ashore about a fortnight later, and burnt, in accordance with the quarantine law of the country, on a pyre in the presence of Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawny. His ashes were carefully preserved and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome near those of Keats.

The character of Shelley is singularly compounded. By the unanimous testimony of his friends, it was remarkable for gentleness, purity, generosity, and strong affection: on the other hand he appears to have had very inadequate conceptions of duty and responsibility, and from his childhood seems to have been in revolt against authority of every kind. The charge of Atheism rests chiefly on Mab, the work of a boy, printed by him for private circulation, and to some extent repudiated as personal opinion. As a poet he stands in the front rank: in lyrical gift, shown in Prometheus, Hellas, and some of his shorter poems, such as "The Skylark," he is probably unsurpassed, and in his Cenci he exhibits dramatic power of a high order. During his short life of 30 years he was, not unnaturally, the object of much severe judgment, and his poetic power even was recognized by only a few. Posterity has taken a more lenient view of his serious errors of conduct, while according to his genius a shining place among the immortals.

Family

Shelley was born at Field Place, Warnham, near Horsham, on 4 Aug. 1792, and the eldest son of Timothy (afterwards Sir Timothy Shelley, baronet) and of his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold. The family, an offshoot of the Shelleys of Michelgrove, had been transplanted for a time to America, in the person of Percy's great-grandfather Timothy, whose son Bysshe, returning at an early age, made the fortune of his house by 2 successive runaway matches, the earliest with Mary Catherine, daughter of Rev. Theobald Michell of Horsham. Percy's father Timothy (born 1753) was the offspring of this marriage.

Bysshe Shelley, who is described as handsome, enterprising, and not over-scrupulous, dignified in appearance and manners, but addicted to inferior company, survived his grandson's birth by 22 years. He was a warm supporter of the duke of Norfolk's interest in the county, and, upon the brief return of the whigs to office in 1806, was rewarded with a baronetcy, "the whim," according to a local rhymer, "of his son Tim." Timothy Shelley's character is fairly given by Professor Dowden: "He had a better heart than his father, and not so clear a head. A kindly, pompous, capricious, well-meaning, ill-doing, wrong-headed man." His letters evince singular confusion, both of thought and expression. The accounts of Shelley's mother are somewhat contradictory, except as regards the beauty which all her children derived from her, and the facility of composition which became the special inheritance of Percy. It is important to remark that the family was not, as sometimes assumed, tory, but pronouncedly whig, and that Shelley would grow up with an addiction to liberty in the abstract and with no special aversion to the revolution.

Youth and education

Percy Shelley received his earliest instruction from Rev. Thomas Edwards of Horsham. At 10 he was transferred to Sion House academy, Brentford, kept by Rev. Dr. Greenlaw, a bad middle-class school, which nevertheless profoundly influenced him in ways. The persecutions which the shy, sensitive boy underwent from his schoolfellows inspired him with the horror of oppression and indomitable spirit of resistance which actuated his whole life; and the scientific instruction he received, though little more than a pretence in itself, awoke a passionate desire to penetrate the secrets of nature. It may almost be said that science was to Shelley what abstract thought was to Coleridge, and that the main peculiarity of the genius of each resulted from the thirst for discovery becoming engrafted upon a temperament originally most unscientifically prone to the romantic and marvellous.

Eton College, where Shelley went at the age of 12, repeated the experience of Sion House on a larger scale. Here, again, his torment was the persecution by his schoolfellows, and his consolation scientific research conducted agreeably to his own notions. He destroyed an old willow with a burning-glass, and, endeavouring to raise the devil, succeeded so far as to raise a tutor. Many other tales of his residence at Eton are probably legendary, but there is no doubt of the influence exerted upon him by the benevolent physician James Lind whom he has celebrated as the hermit in The Revolt of Islam.

He was nicknamed ‘Mad Shelley,’ or ‘Shelley the Atheist,’ and he was known among his schoolfellows for a habit of ‘cursing his father and the king.’ He was an apt scholar, and his progress in the classics eventually made him acquainted with Pliny's ‘Natural History,’ the opening 2 books of which strongly influenced his theological opinions. His literary instincts also awoke; and while at Eton (at 16) he wrote and published his romance of Zastrozzi, a boy's crude imitation of Mrs. Radcliffe. Somewhat later he composed another romance in the same manner, St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, which was also published (in 1810); joined his cousin, Thomas Medwin, in writing a poem on the Wandering Jew, which found no publisher at the time, but eventually appeared in Fraser's Magazine; and either with his sister Elizabeth or with his cousin, Harriet Grove — to whom he was, or thought himself, attached — published in 1810 Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, which he withdrew on discovering that his coadjutor had cribbed wholesale from Matthew Gregory Lewis. 100 copies are said to have been put into circulation, but none has ever come to light. Another early poem, A Poetical View of the Existing State of Things, published anonymously while he was at Oxford, has also disappeared.

Shelley matriculated at University College, Oxford, on 10 April 1810, and took up residence at the Michaelmas term following. Oxford might have been a happy residence for him had he not brought along with him not only the passion for research into whatever the university did not desire him to learn, and the pantheism, miscalled by himself and others atheism, which he had imbibed from Pliny, but also a spirit of aggressive propaganda. Of this he afterwards cured himself, but at the time it was certain to involve him in collision with authorities whom he had indeed no great reason to respect, but of whose real responsibility for his behaviour he took no proper account. This trait was no doubt encouraged by his friendship with Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a man of highly original character entirely dissimilar to his own, whose sketch of him during the Oxford period is the most vivid, and probably the most accurate, portrait of the youthful Shelley (cf. C.K. Sharpe, Letters, i. 37, 444).

Hogg's sarcastic humor encouraged, if it did not prompt, Shelley to such dangerous freaks as composing and circulating, in conjunction with his friend, a pamphlet of burlesque verses gravely attributed to Margaret Nicholson, a mad woman who had attempted to kill the king (Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, Oxford, 1810); and afterwards submitting a printed syllabus of arguments, supposed to demonstrate The Necessity of Atheism, to the bishops and heads of colleges. The authorities summoned Shelley before them on the morning of 25 March 1811, and, upon his refusal to answer interrogatories, delivered to him a sentence of expulsion, which had been signed and sealed in anticipation. Hogg's generous protest brought a similar sentence upon himself.

Early career

There is a general agreement among the descriptions of Shelley by personal acquaintances; all agree as to the slight but tall and sinewy frame, the abundant brown hair, the fair but somewhat tanned and freckled complexion, the dark blue eyes, with their habitual expression of rapt wonder, and the general appearance of extreme youth. Resemblances, by no means merely fanciful, have been found with the portraits of Novalis, of Sir Robert Dudley, styled duke of Northumberland and earl of Warwick, and of Antonio Leisman in the Florentine Ritratti de' Pittori. The preternatural keenness of his senses is well attested, and contributed to the illusions which play so large a part in his history.

Shelley's expulsion was rather favorable than otherwise to the development of his genius, but involved him in the greatest misfortune of his life, his imprudent marriage. Excluded from home, he took rooms in London at 15 Poland Street, and frequented the hospitals, with the idea of ultimately becoming a physician. While in town he renewed the slight acquaintance he had already formed with Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of an hotel-keeper retired from business, and a fellow pupil of Shelley's sisters at a school in Clapham. A schoolgirl verging on 16, she thought herself persecuted; Shelley sympathized, and interfered sufficiently to give her some apparent claim upon him; and when in July he retired to his cousin's country house at Cwm letter after letter came from Harriet complaining of the oppressions she underwent, and threatening to commit suicide. Shelley hastened back to town, saw her, commiserated her appearance, and under the influence of compassion and embittered feeling at his own renunciation by Harriet Grove, who had rejected him before his expulsion from Oxford, committed the weakest action of his life in engaging to marry her. They fled northward, and were wedded in Edinburgh on 28 Aug. 1811.

It seems unlikely that Harriet's father should have had any violent objection to his daughter marrying the eventual heir to a baronetcy; and it is no unreasonable conjecture that the transaction was, in fact, arranged by Harriet's family. If so, however, Harriet was certainly an innocent tool. Pleasing in appearance, fairly well educated, good-mannered and good-humoured as she was, an ordinary man might have promised himself much happiness with her; and indeed, until the affection which she originally felt for Shelley had become indifference, the marriage might have passed for fortunate. His own feelings when it was contracted, and for some time afterwards, are portrayed in his letters to Miss Hitchener, a Sussex schoolmistress, then the object of his ardent intellectual admiration.

Shelley's adventures for the next 3 years are unimportant in comparison with the phenomenon in the background, the silent growth of his mind. In the winter of 1811-12 he lived chiefly at Keswick, where he met with the kindest reception from Southey, where he opened his momentous correspondence with William Godwin (whose ‘Political Justice’ had deeply impressed him.

In February, he departed on the most quixotic of his undertakings, an expedition to redress the wrongs of Ireland. He spoke at meetings, wrote An Address to the Irish People (1812) and Proposals for an Association for the Regeneration of Ireland, and in April departed for Wales, leaving things as he had found them. About this time he adopted the vegetarian system of diet, to which he adhered with more or less constancy when in England, but seems to have generally discarded when abroad. He spent the early summer at his old haunt of Cwm Elan, and by the end of June was settled at Lynmouth in North Devon, where he wrote his powerful remonstrance with Lord Ellenborough on the condemnation of Daniel Isaac Eaton for publishing the 3rd part of Paine's Age of Reason (Barnstaple, 1812, 8vo).

He excited the attention of government by sending a revolutionary Declaration of Rights [Dublin, 1812], and his poem "The Devil's Walk" (a broadsheet, of which the only known copy is in the Public Record Office) to sea in boxes and bottles. Finding it advisable to disappear, he took refuge at Tanyrallt, a house near Tremadoc in North Wales, where his landlord, Mr. Madocks (M.P. for Boston), was constructing the embankment which, at a great sacrifice of natural picturesqueness, has redeemed from the sea the estuary of the Glaslyn. The work was battered by storms, and its financial situation was precarious. Shelley hurried up to London to raise money on its behalf, and there made the personal acquaintance of Godwin, who had previously come down to visit him at Lynmouth, and "found only that he was not to be found."

His residence at Tanyrallt was terminated by a mysterious occurrence in the following February, which he represented as the attack of an assassin, but which had long been dismissed by biographers (such as Richard Garnett in the Dictionary of National Biography) as "in all probability an hallucination." It is now, however, at last proved that he did not invent such a monstrous story. The Century Magazine for October 1905 contained an article entitled “A Strange Adventure of Shelley's,” by Margaret L. Croft, which shows that a shepherd close to Tanyrallt, named Robin Pant Evan, being irritated by some well-meant acts of Shelley in terminating the lives of dying or diseased sheep, did really combine with 2 other shepherds to scare the poet, and Evan was the person who played the part of “assassin.” He himself avowed as much to members of a family, Greaves, who were living at Tanyrallt between 1847 and 1865.

Shelley sought refuge in Ireland with his family, which had for some time included Harriet's elder sister Eliza, an addition pernicious to his domestic peace. Leaving her at Killarney "with plenty of books but no money," Shelley and Harriet travelled up to London, where on 28 June 1813, their daughter Ianthe (afterwards Mrs. Esdaile, died 1876) was born. By the end of July they had taken a house at Bracknell in Berkshire, near Windsor Forest. Queen Mab, principally written, as would seem, in 1812, was privately printed about this time (Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem, London, 1813, 8vo), with notes that might very well have been spared, including "a vindication of natural diet" (the Vindication was separately printed London, 1813, 8vo, but is exceedingly rare). Early in 1814 he published anonymously an ironical Refutation of Deism in a dialogue (London, 8vo), perhaps the rarest of his writings; it was, however, reprinted in 1815 in the Theological Inquirer.

Shelley was now on the eve of the great crisis of his life, his separation from Harriet. So late as September 1813 he speaks of their ‘close-woven happiness.’ But radical incompatibility of temperament had already laid the foundation of an estrangement. Hogg, writing of January 1814, says: "The good Harriet was now in full force, vigour, and effect; roseate as ever, at times perhaps rather too rosy. She had entirely relinquished her favourite practice of reading aloud … neither did she read much to herself; her studies, which had been so constant and exemplary, had dwindled away, and Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them, and to urge her, as of old, to devote herself to the cultivation of her mind. When I called upon her, she proposed a walk … the walk commonly conducted us to some fashionable bonnet-shop." These ominous details are followed by a pathetic letter from Shelley, dated 16 March, deploring the ruin of his domestic happiness and the desolation of his home, from which he has been absent for a month.

In these circumstances it is preposterous to attribute the estrangement to Shelley's passion for Mary Godwin, whom, except perhaps casually as a girl, he had not even seen. Nor is there any reason to impugn Harriet's conjugal fidelity; her attachment had involuntarily decayed, and her tastes and habits had rendered Shelley's society uncongenial to her. None would affirm that the youth of 20 either exercised the patience or made the efforts which he ought to have done, yet he was far from acting with the precipitancy commonly attributed to him. He seems to have foreseen that a separation might ensue; for on 23 March Harriet, hitherto only united to him by a Scots ceremony, was remarried with the rites of the church of England, thus securing her legal status in any event. But so late as May, some time after his meeting with Mary Godwin, he is found pleading in pathetic verse for the restoration of Harriet's affections; and his lines to Mary a month later, though betraying great agitation of mind, are not those of someone who is or wishes to be an accepted lover. But matters were evidently tending this way, and the crisis was precipitated by Harriet's ill-judged step of leaving her home and retiring with her child to her father's house at Bath towards the end of June. She speedily saw her error, but it was too late. Shelley seems to have summoned her to town about 14 July, and after several interviews between them, partly relating no doubt to the ‘deeds and settlements’ mentioned in subsequent correspondence, he left England with Mary Godwin on 28 July. They took with them Jane Clairmont, a daughter by her 1st marriage of Mary Godwin's stepmother, a most imprudent step and the source of many calumnies.

The fugitives crossed the Channel in an open boat, hastened to Paris, and made their way through the eastern provinces of France, still black with the devastation of war, to Switzerland, where they hoped to find a permanent abode. On the way Shelley wrote to Harriet, proposing that she should join them, a project sufficiently repellent, but indicating that Shelley had parted with his wife on terms that, in his eyes at any rate, rendered friendly relations possible. Residence in Switzerland, however, soon proved impracticable for himself and Mary; expected remittances failed to arrive, and they were only enabled to effect their return home by the cheapness of the Rhine water-carriage. Their adventures were recorded in a little narrative (The History of a Six Weeks' Tour, written and published in 1817) which was reissued, with a charming commentary, by Charles Isaac Elton (London, 1894, 8vo).

The remainder of 1814, during which Harriet gave birth to a son, was very trying. Shelleys, Godwins, and Westbrooks were all inimical, and every source of pecuniary supply was cut off but the post-obit. At the beginning of 1815 Shelley's affairs took a favourable turn owing to the death of his grandfather. The new baronet, Sir Timothy, finding that his son could now encumber the estate, thought it best to come to terms with him. No real reconciliation was effected, but Shelley received £1,000 a year, £200 out of which he settled on Harriet, who had given birth in November to a son, Charles Bysshe (he died in 1826). Shelley, and Mary as well, were on moderately good terms with Harriet, seeing her from time to time.

After a tour in the south of England, Shelley took a house at Bishopgate, close by Windsor Forest. Consumption seemed to threaten for a time but passed away. The feeling thus engendered combined with the solemnity of the forest scenery to inspire Alastor,published in 1816 (Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, London, 8vo), with some minor poems, also in a purely Shelleyan key.

During the winter Shelley pursued the study of Greek literature in conjunction with his friends Hogg and Thomas Love Peacock, who had been introduced to him by their common publisher Hookham. Both were excellent classical scholars, but Shelley alone of the 3 could assimilate the inner spirit of Greece, and these studies were most helpful to his development. At this time dawns the tranquility of soul which, though sorely tried by storms from within and without, beamed more and more throughout the remainder of his life. Henceforth he no longer aspired to enter personally into political agitation, and was content to work upon the world by his writings. About this time, too, was most probably written the beautiful if inconclusive Essay on Christianity, not printed until Shelley Memorials (1859), which shows so remarkable a progress from the prejudice and unreason of the notes to ‘Queen Mab.

In May 1816 the pair left England for Switzerland, together with Miss Clairmont, and their own infant son William; a hasty flight precipitated in all probability by the unbearable annoyance of Godwin's affairs. Godwin's financial embarrassments had led him to revise his opinion of Shelley's conduct. He importuned Shelley for money, which Shelley was for a time only too ready to supply; but patience failed at last, and, weary of perpetual contest, he withdrew from the scene with more expedition than dignity. The influence of Jane, or, as she now called herself, Claire Clairmont, no doubt also contributed to their departure, although both Shelley and Mary were ignorant of the liaison with Byron which made her anxious to join him in Switzerland. Shelley now met Byron there, and little as their characters had in common, similarity of fortune and affinity of genius made them friends. "The most gentle, the most amiable, and the least worldly-minded person I ever met," said Byron afterwards. "I have seen nothing like him, and never shall again, I am certain." The poets travelled together, and Byron's poetry, to its great advantage, was deeply influenced by his new friendship. Shelley composed his "Mont Blanc," and Mary conceived and partly wrote her Frankenstein.

Returning to England in the autumn, they established themselves at Bath, prior to occupying the house which, probably at Peacock's recommendation, they had taken at Great Marlow, where 2 stunning blows fell upon them. The melancholy death of Fanny Godwin, Mary's half-sister, was succeeded by the dismal tragedy of Harriet Shelley. Learning that she had left her father's house, Shelley was having every search made for her, when, on 10 December 1816, her body was taken from the Serpentine, where it had been for 3 or 4 weeks. She was apparently in an advanced state of pregnancy (cf. Times, 12 Dec. 1816; the verdict at the inquest on "Harriet Smith" was "Found drowned").

Second marriage

The circumstances immediately occasioning Harriet's death are too obscure to be investigated with profit. Shelley certainly had no share in them, but his relations with her were no doubt present to his mind when he afterwards spoke of himself as "a prey to the reproaches of memory." He hastened, nevertheless, to perform the obvious duty of giving his union with Mary a legal sanction (they were married on 30 December at St. Mildred's, in the city of London), and next tried to obtain his 2 children by Harriet (Ianthe and Charles Bysshe) from her relatives. The case went before the court of chancery, and, by a memorable decision of Lord Eldon, on 27 March 1817, was decided against Shelley. Early in this year (1817) appeared Shelley's Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom. By the Hermit of Marlow, London, 8vo; and, under a like pseudonym, he issued in the same year An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte (London, 1843, 8vo; being a reprint of the lost edition of 1817).

A son, William, had been born to Shelley and Mary Godwin in January 1816, and September 1817 saw the birth of a daughter, Clara. The household was further augmented by the company of Claire and her child Allegra, the fruit of her affair with Byron, which had ended in mutual disgust and bitter recrimination. Peacock was a near neighbour, but a closer friend was Leigh Hunt, whom Shelley had come to know upon his return from Switzerland, and whose delicate attentions had soothed the miseries of the preceding winter. Shelley gave Hunt £1,400 to relieve his difficulties — a noble action, if it had not been performed at the expense of others who had juster claims upon him. He made the acquaintance of Keats through Hunt, but it did not become friendship. Coleridge he never met, to the loss of both.

Godwin renewed his importunities for financial help, which, after a long display of patience and magnanimity on Shelley's part, ended in complete estrangement. Nothing gives a higher idea of the energy of Shelley's mind than that, amid all these troubles, the most ambitious of his poems should have been written within 6 months. The Revolt of Islam (London, 1818, 8vo) — originally called Laon and Cythna (a few copies were printed under this title in 1817), and wisely altered before publication — was written partly on a high seat in Bisham Wood, partly as he glided or anchored in his boat amid the Thames islets and miniature waterfalls. Its publication occasioned a bitter attack in the Quarterly, and drew enthusiastic praise from Wilson, writing under the influence of De Quincey; but it was otherwise received with the indifference which, during Shelley's lifetime, the public, including his own friends, almost invariably manifested towards his works..

When not writing The Revolt of Islam Shelley was much engaged in relieving the distress of the cottagers in his neighborhood, and was publishing his political tracts under the signature of "The Hermit of Marlow." By the beginning of 1818 he had become restless, and indeed the motives for emigration were weighty as well as numerous. Of a particular motive he did not think — the great benefit which his genius was destined to receive by transplantation to a land of romantic beauty and classical association. He left England on 11 March, and arrived at Turin on 31 March 1818. He remained in Italy till his death..

Italy

The incidents of Shelley's life in Italy were mainly intellectual. After spending the spring of 1818 at Como and Milan, and the summer at the baths of Lucca, where he translated Plato's Symposium, and finished Rosalind and Helen (commenced the year before at Marlow), he went to Venice on the unwelcome errand of delivering Claire's daughter to her father, Byron. Here his own daughter Clara died of a disorder induced by the climate. Byron lent him a villa at Este, where he began Prometheus Unbound, and wrote the "Lines on the Euganean Hills," published, along with "Rosalind and Helen" and a few other poems, in the following year. He also wrote about this time "Julian and Maddalo," inspired by his visits to Byron at Venice. Venice and Byron stand out vividly in the poem against a background of utter obscurity.

In November Shelley set out for Rome, and began upon the journey the series of descriptive letters to Peacock, which places him at the head of English epistolographers in this department. The masters of a splendid prose style rarely carry this into their familiar correspondence, but Shelley's prose writings and his letters are of a piece. December was spent at Naples, where painful circumstances imperfectly known produced the "Lines written in Dejection," the earliest great example of that marvel of melody and intensity, the characteristically Shelleyan lyric.

Returning to Rome, he remained there until June 1819, when the death of his infant son William drove him to Leghorn, and subsequently to Florence, where his youngest son, afterwards Sir Percy Florence Shelley, was born in November. The greater part of Prometheus Unbound had been written at Rome, and immediately afterwards he turned to the tragedy of Beatrice Cenci, whose countenance, or reputed countenance, had fascinated him in Guido's portrait in the Colonna palace at Rome. Both pieces were published in the course of 1819-1820 (The Cenci: a Tragedy in five Acts, Leghorn, 1819, 8vo; 2nd edit. London, 1821, 8vo; Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama in four acts, with other Poems, London, 1820, 8vo).

The "Ode to the West Wind" was written at Florence in October 1819, about which time he also produced "Peter Bell the Third," a parody of Wordsworth, evincing more genuine if more discriminating admiration than many panegyrics. "The Masque of Anarchy," a poem provoked by the indignation at the ‘Manchester massacre’ of August 1819, was another composition of this period. It did not appear until 1832. "Peter Bell the Third" remained in manuscript until 1839.

At the close of 1819 Shelley moved to Pisa, which was in the main his domicile for the rest of his life. He had become greatly interested in a project of his friends, the Gisbornes, for a steamboat between Genoa and Leghorn. The undertaking proved premature, but produced (in July 1820) that comparable union of high and familiar poetry, the "Epistle to Maria Gisborne." The year 1820 also produced the dazzling "Witch of Atlas" and the humorous burlesque on Queen Caroline's trial, Swellfoot the Tyrant (Œdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant: a Tragedy in two Acts. Translated from the original Doric, London, 1820, 8vo, written in August and published anonymously; on the Society for the Suppression of Vice threatening to prosecute, it was withdrawn, and only some 7 copies of the original are known; reprinted, London, 1876, 8vo). But the year was chiefly remarkable for its lyrics, ranging from the "Sensitive Plant" and the "Skylark" down to the eight lines for which Landor, ever hyperbolical in praise and dispraise, would have bartered the whole of Beaumont and Fletcher.

The year 1820 was uneventful until near its end, when Shelley made the acquaintance of the lovely Emilia Viviani, a young Italian lady who had been imprisoned in a convent with a view to extorting her consent to an obnoxious marriage. The 1st draft of his ‘Epipsychidion’ existed some time before Shelley met Emilia, but his meeting with her supplied the needful impulse to perfect and complete that piece of radiant mysticism and rapturous melody (100 copies, London, 1821, 8vo). It attests the growing influence of Plato whose ‘Banquet’ he had already translated. That influence is even more apparent in another composition of 1821, the ‘Defence of Poetry,’ written in answer to Peacock, almost contemporaneously with ‘Epipsychidion.’ 2 additional parts were contemplated, but never written, and the essay remained in manuscript until the publication of Shelley's prose writings in 1840. Before long a further incentive to composition was supplied by the death of Keats, whose memory inspired ‘Adonais’ (Pisa, 1821, 4to).

The chief external incident of 1821 was Shelley's visit to Byron at Ravenna, for the sake of seeing Byron's and Claire Clairmont's daughter, the little Allegra, before Byron moved to Pisa. The relations between Byron and Claire, who now taught Lady Mountcashell's daughters in Florence, were a continual source of friction. Shelley's conduct towards both parties was unexceptionable, and showed what progress he had made in calm judgment and self-control. Shelley had refused any further contributions to Godwin, but the latter's demands continued, and Shelley permitted Mary to send to her father the money she received for her new novel, Valperga.

Byron's residence at Pisa, with all its drawbacks, enlivened and diversified Shelley's life, which was further cheered by the society of the gentle and generous Edward Elliker Williams and of his wife Jane, the subject of Shelley's "With a Guitar" and other exquisite lyrics. In the autumn of 1821 the tidings of the Greek insurrection prompted his Hellas (London, 1822, 8vo), an imitation in plan, though not in diction, of the ‘Persæ’ of Æschylus, containing some of his noblest lyrical writing. The indifference of the public seems to have discouraged him from prolonged efforts to which he was not constrained, as he was in this instance, by some overmastering impulse.

The tragedy on Charles I, which he began to write early in 1822, made little progress; but his powers as a translator appeared at their best in the scenes from Faust and Calderon's Mágico Prodigioso which he rendered somewhat later as the basis of papers for the Liberal. His appearance and conversation at this time are vividly described by Edward John Trelawny, a new addition to the Pisan circle.

In April the Shelleys and Williamses removed to Lerici, near Spezzia. The wild scenery and primitive people were most congenial to Shelley, who declared himself ready to say with Faust to the passing hour, "Verweile doch, du bist so schön." While sailing, studying, listening to Mrs. Williams's music, and writing his Triumph of Life as his boat rocked in the moonlight, he heard of the Leigh Hunts' arrival at Pisa, and hastened to meet them, making them as comfortable as Byron's moodiness and Mrs. Hunt's apparently mortal sickness permitted.

Death

The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Edouard Fournier, 1889; pictured in the center are, from left, Trelawny, Hunt and Byron. (In fact Hunt did not observe the cremation, he remained in his carriage.)

Shelley sailed for Spezzia from Leghorn on 8 July 1822, accompanied by Williams. Scarcely had they embarked when the face of sky and sea darkened ominously. Trelawny watched the little vessel sailing in the company of many others, and graphically describes how all were blotted from view by the squall, and how, when this had passed off, all reappeared except Shelley's, which was never seen again until months afterwards she was dredged up from the bottom of the sea. Some thought that she had been accidentally or designedly run down in the squall, but many circumstances militate against this theory.

Shelley's body, best recognised by the volumes of Sophocles and Keats in the pockets, was cast ashore near Viareggio on 18 July, and, after having been buried for some time in the sand, was on 16 August, in the presence of Byron, Hunt, and Trelawny, cremated, to allow for the interment of the ashes in the protestant cemetery at Rome. This took place on 7 December immediately under the pyramid of Caius Cestius. Leigh Hunt wrote the Latin epitaph, with the famous Cor Cordium, and Trelawny added 3 English lines from The Tempest. The heart, which would not burn, and had been snatched from the flames by Trelawny, was given to Mary Shelley, and was in the keeping of her family (cf. Guido Biaggi, Gli ultimi giorni di P. B. Shelley, Florence, 1892).

Shelley's eldest son, Charles Bysshe Shelley, the offspring of his union with Harriet Westbrook, did not long survive him, and upon the death of Sir Timothy Shelley in 1844 the baronetcy passed to the poet's only surviving son by Mary Godwin, Sir Percy Florence Shelley (1819–1889). This most gentle and lovable man, the inheritor of most of his father's fine qualities and of many of his tastes and accomplishments, died in December 1889. On 22 June 1848 he married Jane, daughter of Thomas Gibson, and widow of the Hon. Charles Robert St. John, who survived him; but, the marriage having proved childless, the baronetcy devolved upon Edward, son of Shelley's younger brother John, and was then enjoyed by Sir Edward's brother Charles.

Writing

Posthumous

In 1823 there appeared Poetical Pieces, containing "Prometheus Unmasked" (sic), "Hellas," "The Cenci," "Rosalind and Helen," with other poems.

"Julian and Maddalo" and "The Witch of Atlas," which had hitherto remained in manuscript, were published in 1824 along with the unfinished "Triumph of Life," the "Epistle to Maria Gisborne," and a large number of minor lyrics, and translations, including those executed for the Liberal. The title of the collection was Posthumous Poems (London, 8vo), and the expenses were guaranteed by 2 poets, B.W. Procter and T.L. Beddoes, and Beddoes's future biographer, T. Kelsall. It was almost immediately withdrawn in virtue of an arrangement with Sir Timothy Shelley, and for long the public demand continued to be supplied by pirated editions, the refusal of the courts to protect Queen Mab being apparently taken as implying a license to appropriate anything.

A pirated edition of Miscellaneous Poems appeared in numbers during 1826 (London, 12mo). The consequent cheapness of circulation greatly extended Shelley's fame and influence. In 1829 admirers at Cambridge reprinted Adonais, and undertook a fruitless mission for the conversion of his own university. In 1829 and 1834 very imperfect issues of his Poetical Works appeared, the former along with those of Coleridge and Keats, and with a memoir by Cyrus Redding. Another edition of his Works in a single small volume was published by Charles Daly in 1836.

In 1839, the obstacles to an authentic edition having been removed in some unexplained manner, Mrs. Shelley published what was then supposed to be a definitive edition in 4 volumes, enriched with biographical notes and some very beautiful lyrics which had remained in manuscript. An American edition of this, with a memoir by J. Russell Lowell, appeared at Boston in 1855, 3 vols. 12mo.

A collection of his letters and miscellaneous prose writings followed in 1840. The letters, published in 1852 with a preface by Robert Browning, are mostly fabrications by a person claiming to be a natural son of Byron. Many most important additions, however, have been made to those published in 1840.

In 1862 Richard Garnett, as the result of an examination of Shelley's manuscripts, published a number of fragments in verse and prose, some of extreme interest, under the title Relics of Shelley. These, as well as many of the new letters continually coming to light, have been incorporated into more recent editions of Shelley's writings. The only recent edition virtually complete is Buxton Forman's in 8 volumes, containing both verse and prose (London, 1876–80, 8vo); but those of W.M. Rossetti (1870, 1878, and 1888) and of G.E. Woodberry (American, 1892, 1893) deserve consideration. Letters to Claire Clairmont and Miss Hitchener, and Harriet Shelley's letters to Miss Nugent, have been printed separately. A full collection of the letters to Elizabeth Hitchener was originally edited by Bertram Dobell, 1908. Translations into French, Italian, German, and Russian are numerous. Selections have been edited by Stopford A. Brooke (1880) and by Richard Garnett (Parchment Library, 1880). The bulk of Shelley's manuscripts has been deposited by his daughter-in-law, Lady Shelley, in the Bodleian Library.

Poetry

The excessive vehemence which hurried Shelley into many hasty and unjustifiable steps, was, from a moral point of view, a serious infirmity, but failure to control impulse seems to have been a condition of his greatness and of his influence on mankind. He took Parnassus by storm. His poetical productiveness would have been admirable as the result of a long life; as the work in the main of little more than 5 years, it is among the greatest marvels in the history of the human mind. Had it been as unequal in matter as Dryden, in manner as Wordsworth, it would still have been wonderful; but, apart from occasional obscurities in meaning and lapses in grammar, it is as perfect in form as in substance, and equable in merit to a degree unapproached by any of his contemporaries.

Queen Mab (1813) remained unknown until a piratical reproduction of it in 1821 (which Shelley vainly tried to suppress by an injunction) excited attention, and it obtained a celebrity long denied to his maturer and more truly poetical writings. It is indeed admirably adapted to serve as a freethinking and socialistic gospel, being couched in a strain of rhetoric so exalted as to pass easily for poetry.

Alastor (1816) is Shelley's 1st really great poem, the earliest poem in which he is truly himself, where the presentiment of impending dissolution and "the desire of the moth for the star" are shadowed forth in an obscure but majestic allegory.

The Revolt of Islam (1817) may be described as a poet's impassioned vision of the French revolution and the succeeding reaction. Compared with the later Prometheus Unbound it is the product of a mighty ferment, as the other poem is of the calm ensuing upon it. The music of its Spenserian stanzas is unsurpassed in the language; and although the middle part is somewhat tedious, Shelley never excelled the opening and the close — Cythna's education and bridal, the picture of the fallen tyrant, the tremendous scenes of pestilence and famine; above all, perhaps, the dedication to Mary.

The "Ode to the West Wind," written in 1819, is perhaps the grandest of Shelley's lyrics.

Prometheus Unbound (1820) is a dithyrambic of sublime exultation on the redemption of humanity, and an assemblage of all that language has of gorgeousness and verse of melody; the diction and passion of the ‘Cenci’ are toned down to their sombre theme, as different from the ‘Prometheus’ as the atrocity of its chief male character is from the transcendent heroism of the suffering demi-god. But both, the tragedy no less than the mythological drama, are effusions of lyrical emotion, and precisely correspond to the state of feeling which produced them.

Adonais (1821) was not the most magnificent of Shelley's poems, but perhaps his poem of most sustained magnificence. The concluding stanzas more fully than any other passage in his writings embody his ultimate speculative conclusions, substantially identical with Spinoza's, whose Tractatus he began to translate about the same time.

Among his shorter poems are some which reach perfection, such as the sonnet on "Ozymandias," "Music when soft voices die," "I arise from dreams of thee," "When the lamp is shattered," the "Ode to the West Wind," and "O world! O life! O time!". The lucidity and symmetry of the minor lyrics rival anything in antiquity, and surpass the best modern examples by their greater apparent spontaneity, the result in fact of the most strenuous revision. Of his lyrics, those which have been most frequently set to music are: ‘I arise from dreams of thee,’ ‘The Cloud,’ ‘The fountains mingle with the river,’ ‘One word is too often profaned,’ and ‘Music when soft voices die.’

After many vicissitudes, opinion seems to be agreeing to recognize Shelley as the supreme lyrist, all of whose poems, whatever their outward form, should be viewed from the lyrical standpoint. This is a just judgment, for even the apparently austere and methodical Cenci is as truly born of a passionate lyrica impulse as any of his songs. Despite his limitations, no modern poet, unless it be Wordsworth, has so deeply influenced English poetry.

Prose

The splendor of Shelley's prose style, while exalting his character for imagination, has seemed incompatible with homely wisdom. In reality his essays and correspondence are not more distinguished by fine insight into high matters than by sound common-sense in ordinary things. No contemporary, perhaps, so habitually conveys the impression of a man in advance of his time. His capacity for calm discussion appears to advantage under the most provoking circumstances, as in his correspondence with Godwin, Booth, and Southey. As a critic, Shelley does not possess Coleridge's subtlety and penetration, but has a gift for the intuitive recognition of excellence which occasionally carries him too far in enthusiasm, but at all events insures him against the petty and self-interested jealousies from which none of his contemporaries, except Scott and Keats, can be considered exempt. This delight in the work of others, even more than his own poetical power, renders him matchless as a translator.

Critical introduction

by Frederic William Henry Myers

The title of "the poets’ poet," which has been bestowed for various reasons on very different authors, applies perhaps with a truer fitness to Shelley than to any of the rest. For all students of Shelley must in a manner feel that they have before them an extreme, almost an extravagant, specimen of the poetic character; and the enthusiastic love, or contemptuous aversion, which his works have inspired has depended mainly on the reader’s sympathy or distaste for that character when exhibited in its unmixed intensity.

And if a brief introductory notice is to be prefixed to a selection from those poems, it becomes speedily obvious that it is on Shelley’s individual nature, rather than on his historical position, that stress must be laid. Considered as a link in the chain of English literature, his poetry is of less importance than we might expect. It is not closely affiliated to the work of any preceding school, nor, with one or two brilliant exceptions, has it modified subsequent poetry in any conspicuous way. It is no doubt true that Shelley, belonging to that group of poets whose genius was awakened by the stirring years which ushered in this century, shows traces of the influence of more than one contemporary. There are echoes of Wordsworth in Alastor, echoes of Moore in the lyrics, echoes even of Byron in the later poems. But, with the possible exception of Wordsworth, whose fresh revelation of Nature supplied poetic nutriment even to minds quite alien from his own, none of these can be said to have perceptibly modified either the substance or the style of Shelley’s works as a whole.

Nor, again, will it be useful to dwell at length here on the special characteristics of each of his poems in order. They show indeed much apparent diversity both of form and content. Alastor is the early reflection of the dreamy and solitary side of its author’s nature. The Revolt of Islam embodies in a fantastic tale the poet’s eager rebellion against the cruelties and oppressions of the world. In Prometheus Unbound these two strains mingle in their highest intensity. The drama of The Cenci shows Shelley’s power of dealing objectively with the thoughts and passions of natures other than his own. Adonais, his elegy on the death of Keats, is the most carefully finished, and the most generally popular, of his longer pieces. And in the songs and odes which he poured forth during his last years, his genius, essentially lyrical, found its most unmixed and spontaneous expression. But in fact the forms which Shelley’s poems assumed, or the occasions which gave them birth, are not the points on which it is most important to linger. It is in ‘the one Spirit’s plastic stress’ which pervades them all,—in the exciting and elevating quality which all in common possess,—that the strange potency of Shelley lies.

For although the directly traceable instances of this great poet’s influence on the style of his successors may be few or unimportant, it by no means follows that the impression left by his personality has been small. On the contrary, it has, I believe, been deeply felt by most of those who since his day have had any share of poetic sensibility as at once an explanation and a justification of the points in which they feel themselves different from the mass of mankind. His character and his story,— more chequered and romantic than Wordsworth’s, purer and loftier than Byron’s,— are such as to call forth in men of ardent and poetic temper the maximum at once of sympathetic pity and sympathetic triumph.

For such men are apt to feel that they have a controversy with the world. Their virtue,— because it is original rather than reflected,— because it rests on impulse rather than on tradition,— seems too often to be counted for nothing at all by those whose highest achievement is to walk mechanically along the ancient ways. Their eagerness to face the reality of things, without some touch of which religion is but a cajoling dream, is denounced as heresy or atheism. Their enthusiasm for ideal beauty, without some touch of which love is but a selfish instinct, is referred to the promptings of a less dignified passion. The very name of their master Plato is vulgarised into an easy sneer. And nevertheless the wisest among them perceive that all this must be, and is better thus. The world must be arranged to suit the ordinary man, for though the man of genius is more capable of being pained, the ordinary man is more likely to be really injured by surroundings unfitted for his development. In society, as in nature, the tests which any exceptional variation has to encounter should be prompt and severe. It is better that poets should be

‘Cradled into poesy by wrong,

And learn in suffering what they teach in song,”

than that a door should be opened to those who are the shadow of that of which the poet is the reality,—who are only sentimental, only revolutionary, only uncontrolled. It is better that the world should persecute a Shelley than that it should endure a St. Just.

But in whatever mood the man of poetic temper may contemplate his own relation to society, he will be tempted to dwell upon, even to idealise, the character and achievements of Shelley. Perhaps he is dreaming, as many men have innocently dreamt who had not strength enough to make their dream come true, of the delight of justifying what the world calls restless indolence by some apparition of unlooked-for power; of revealing the central force of self-control which has guided those eager impulses along an ordered way,

‘As the sun rules, even with a tyrant’s gaze

The unquiet republic of the maze

Of Planets struggling fierce toward Heaven’s free wilderness’;—

of giving, in short, to motives misconstrued and character maligned the noble vindication of some work whose sincerity and virtue enshrine it in the heart of a great people. In such a mood he will turn proudly to Shelley as to one who knew to the uttermost the poet’s sorrow, and has received the poet’s reward; one who, assailed by obloquy, misjudged, abandoned and accursed, replied by strains which have become a part of the highest moments of all after generations, an element (if I may be allowed the expression) in the religion of mankind.

Or if the mood in which the lover of poetry turns to Shelley be merely one in which that true world in which he fain would dwell seems in danger of fading into a remote unreality amid the gross and pressing cares of every day, he will still be tempted to cling to and magnify the poet of Prometheus Unbound, because he offers so uncompromising a testimony to the validity of the poetic vision, because he carries as it were the accredited message of a dweller among unspeakable things.

We need not therefore wonder if among poets and imaginative critics we find the worship of Shelley carried to an extraordinary height. I quote as a specimen some words of a living poet himself closely akin to Shelley in the character of his genius. "Shelley outsang all poets on record but some two or three throughout all time; his depths and heights of inner and outer music are as divine as nature’s, and not sooner exhaustible. He was alone the perfect singing-god; his thoughts, words, deeds, all sang together…. The master singer of our modern race and age; the poet beloved above all other poets, being beyond all other poets—in one word, and the only proper word—divine."

The tone of this eulogy presupposes that there will be many readers to agree and to enjoy. And, in fact, the representatives of this school of criticism are now so strong, and their utterance so confident, that the easiest course in treating of Shelley would be simply to accept their general view, and to ignore that opposite opinion which, if not less widely held, finds at any rate less eloquent exposition. But it is surely not satisfactory that literary judgments should thus become merely the utterances of the imaginative to the imaginative, of the aesthetic to the aesthetic, that "poetry and criticism," in Pope’s words, should be "by no means the universal concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who read there."

We should surely desire that poetry should become "the universal concern of the world" at least thus far; that those who delight in its deeper mysteries should also be ready to meet plain men on the common ground of plain good sense; should see what they see, listen to what they say, and explain their own superior insight in terms intelligible to all. If clear-headed bat unimaginative readers are practically told that the realm of poetry is a fairy-land which they cannot enter, they will retaliate by calling it a "Cloud-cuckoo-town" built in the air. The sight of our esoteric raptures will only incite them to use the term "poetry" as the antithesis, not of prose, but of common-sense and right reason.

And there is much indeed both in the matter and style of Shelley’s poems to which readers of this uninitiated class are apt to take exception. "We had always supposed," they say,— if I may condense many floating criticisms into an argument, as it were, of the advocatus diaboli in the case of Shelley’s canonisation,— "we had always supposed that one main function of poetry, at least, was to irradiate human virtue with its proper, but often hidden, charm; that she depicts to us the inspiring triumph of man’s higher over his lower self; that (in Plato’s words) 'by adorning ten thousand deeds of men long gone she educates the men that are to be.' But we find Shelley telling us, 'You might as well go to a gin-shop for a leg of mutton as expect anything human or earthly from me.' And his poems bear out this self-criticism.

He is indeed fond of painting a golden age of human happiness; but of what does his millennium consist? and how is it attained? In the "Witch of Atlas" it is the fantastic paradise of a child’s day-dream, summoned, like the transformation-scene in a pantomime, by the capricious touch of a fairy. In the Prometheus an attempt is made to deal more seriously with the sins and sorrows of men. But even there the knot of human destinies is cut and not unravelled; the arbitrary catastrophes of an improvised and chaotic mythology bring about a change in human affairs depending in no way on moral struggle or moral achievement,— on which every real change in human affairs must depend,— but effected apparently by the simple removal of priests and kings,—of the persons, that is to say, in whom the race, however mistakenly, has hitherto embodied its instincts of reverence and of order. And further,—to illustrate by one striking instance the pervading unreality of Shelley’s ideals,—what does Prometheus himself, the vaunted substitute for any other Redeemer, propose to do in this long-expected and culminant hour? He begins at once “There is a cave,” and proposes to retire thither straightway with the mysterious Asia, and “entangle buds and flowers and beams.” “Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him,”—not surely occupied as a Milton or an Æschylus would have left that bringer of light to men! Nay, so constantly does this idea of a cave-life of beatific seclusion recur in Shelley’s mind that it is even left uncertain whether Asia, amid competing offers of the same kind, can obey Prometheus’ call. For hardly is his description over when Earth in her turn begins “There is a cavern,”— and invites the mystic goddess to this alternative retreat. Nor is Asia’s choice of caves ended here. For we have already heard of her as occupying with Ione a submarine cavern,—as well as an Indian solitude, styled indeed a vale, but differing from the caves above-mentioned in no essential particular. And if this unreality, this aloofness from the real facts of life, pervades Shelley’s crowning composition, what are we to say of Queen Mab and the Revolt of Islam? If we compare their characters and incidents with anything which earth has really to show we should be tempted to argue that their author had never seen a human being. And the one dramatic situation in which Shelley is so strong,—the situation which gives tragic intensity alike to his Cenci and his Prometheus,—hardly assures us of any more searching knowledge of mankind. For it is simply the opposition of absolute wickedness to absolute virtue.

"For the most part, then, Shelley’s conception of the actual world seems to us boyish and visionary. Nor, on the other hand, does he offer us much more of wisdom when we desert the actual world for the ideal,—the realm of observation and experience for the realm of conjecture and intuition. We cannot, in fact, discover what he thought on the main spiritual problems which occupy mankind, while in his treatment of the beliefs of others there is often a violent crudity which boyishness can scarcely excuse. Now we do not demand of a poet a definite religion or a definite philosophy. But we are disappointed to find in so much lofty verse so little substance,—nothing, we may almost say, save a few crumbs from the banquet of Plato. The lark who so scorned our earth and heaven might have brought us, we think, some more convincing message from his empyrean air.

"And now as regards his style. We perceive and admit that Shelley’s style is unique and inimitable. But it often seems to us inimitable only as Turner’s latest pictures are inimitable; the work obviously of a great master, but work so diffused and deflected as to bear quite too remote a relation to the reality of things. We can believe that Shelley’s descriptions of natural scenes, for instance, are full of delightful suggestiveness for the imaginative reader. But considered simply as descriptions we cannot admit that they describe. The objects on which our eyes have rested are certainly not so crystalline or so marmoreal, so amethystine, pellucid, or resplendent, as the objects which meet us in Shelley’s song. Nature never seems to be enough for him as she is, and yet we do not think that he has really improved on her. 14

"Again; we know that it is characteristic of the poetic mind to be fertile in imagery, and to pass from one thought to another by an emotional rather than a logical link of connection. But as regards imagery we think that Shelley might with advantage have remembered Corinna’s advice to Pindar in a somewhat similar case,—“to sow with the hand, and not with the whole sack”; while as regards the connection of parts we think that though the poet (like one of his own magic pinnaces) may be in reality impelled by a rushing impulse peculiar to himself, he should nevertheless (like those pinnaces) carry a rag of sail, so that some breath of reason may at least seem to be bearing him along. We are aware that this hurrying spontaneity of style is often cited as a proof of Shelley’s wealth of imagination. Yet in desiring from him more concentration, more finish, more self-control, we are not desiring that he should have had less imagination but more; that he should have had the power of renewing his inspiration on the same theme and employing it for the perfection of the same passage; so as to leave us less of melodious incoherence,—less of that which is perhaps poetry but is certainly nothing but poetry,—and more of what the greatest poets have left us, namely high ideas and noble emotions enshrined in a form so complete and exquisite that the ideas seem to derive a new truth, the emotions a new dignity, from the intensity with which they have existed in those master minds."

Some such words as these will express the thoughts of many men whose opinions we cannot disregard without a risk of weakening, by our literary exclusiveness, the hold of poetry on the mass of mankind. But neither need we admit that such criticisms as these are unanswerable. Some measure of truth they do no doubt contain, and herein we must plead our poet’s youth and immaturity as our best reply. That immaturity, as we believe, was lessening with every season that passed over his head. With the exception of Alastor (1815),— the first and most pathetic of Shelley’s portraits of himself,— all his poems that possess much value were written in the last four and a-half years of his life (1818–22), and during those years a great, though not a uniform, progress is surely discernible. As his hand gains in cunning we see him retaining all his earliest magic, but also able from time to time to dismiss that excess of individuality which would be mannerism were it less spontaneous.

The drama of Hellas, the last long poem which he finished, illustrates this irregular advance in power. It is for the most part among the slightest of his compositions, but in its concluding chorus,— Shelley’s version of the ancient theme, Alter erit tum Tiphys et altera quæ vehat Argo,— we recognise, more plainly perhaps than ever before in his lyrics, that solidity and simplicity of treatment which we associate with classical masterpieces. And the lyrics of the last year of his life are the very crown of all that he has bequeathed. The delight indeed with which we hear them too quickly passes into regret, so plainly do they tell us that we have but looked on the poet’s opening blossom; his full flower and glory have been reserved as a sight for the blest to see.

But there is much that has been said in Shelley’s dispraise to which we shall need to plead no demurrer. We shall admit it; but in such fashion that our admission constitutes a different or a higher claim. If we are told of the crudity of his teaching and of his conceptions of life, we answer that what we find in him it neither a code nor a philosophy, but a rarer thing,— an example, namely (as it were in an angel or in a child), of the manner in which the littleness and the crimes of men shock a pure spirit which has never compromised with their ignobility nor been tainted with their decay. And in the one dramatic situation in which Shelley is confessedly so great,— the attitude of Beatrice resisting her father, of Prometheus resisting Zeus,— we say that we discern the noble image of that courageous and enduring element in the poet himself which gives force to his gentleness and dignity to his innocence, and which through all his errors, his sufferings, his inward and outward storms, leaves us at last with the conviction that "there is nothing which a spirit of such magnitude cannot overcome or undergo."

Again, if we are told of the vagueness or incoherence of Shelley’s language, we answer that poetic language must always be a compromise between the things which can definitely be said and the things which the poet fain would say; and that when poet or painter desires to fill us with the sense of the vibrating worlds of spiritual intelligences which interpenetrate the world we see,— of those

‘Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,…

Peopled with unimaginable shapes,…

Yet each intertranspicuous,’—

it must needs be that the reflection of these transcendent things should come to us in forms that luxuriate into arabesque, in colours that shimmer into iridescence, in speech that kindles into imagery; while yet we can with little doubt discern whether he who addresses us is merely illuminating the mists of his own mind, or ‘has beheld’ (as Plato has it) ‘and been initiated into the most blessed of initiations, gazing on simple and imperishable and happy visions in a stainless day.’

And, finally, if we are told that, whatever these visions or mysteries may be, Shelley has not revealed them; that he has contributed nothing to the common faith and creed of men,—has only added to their aspiring anthem one keen melodious cry;—we answer that this common religion of all the world advances by many kinds of prophecy, and is spread abroad by the flying flames of pure emotion as well as by the solid incandescence of eternal truth. Some few souls indeed there are,—a Plato, a Dante, a Wordsworth,—whom we may without extravagance call stars of the spiritual firmament, so sure and lasting seems their testimony to those realities which life hides from us as sunlight hides the depth of heaven. But we affirm that in Shelley too there is a testimony of like kind, though it has less of substance and definition, and seems to float diffused in an ethereal loveliness. We may rather liken him to the dewdrop of his own song, which

‘becomes a winged mist

And wanders up the vault of the blue day,

Outlives the noon, and in the sun’s last ray

Hangs o’er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.’

For the hues of sunset also have for us their revelation. We look, and the conviction steals over us that such a spectacle can be no accident in the scheme of things; that the whole universe is tending to beauty; and that the apocalypse of that crimsoned heaven may be not the less authentic because it is so fugitive, not the less real because it comes to us in a fantasy wrought but of light and air.

Critical reputation

In 1835 John Stuart Mill ably compared and contrasted him with Wordsworth; and the finest passage in his Pauline (1833) is the outburst of Browning's passionate admiration.

Recognition

Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

19th century

Shelley's mainstream following did not develop until a generation after his passing, unlike Lord Byron, who was popular among all classes during his lifetime despite his radical views. For decades after his death, Shelley was mainly appreciated by only the major Victorian poets, the pre-Raphaelites, the socialists and the labour movement. A reason for this was the extreme discomfort with Shelley's political radicalism which led popular anthologists to confine Shelley's reputation to the relatively sanitised 'magazine' pieces such as 'Ozymandias' or 'Lines to an Indian Air'.

Critics such as Matthew Arnold reinterpreted Shelley's work to make him seem a lyricist and a dilettante who had no serious intellectual positions and whose longer poems were not worth study. Arnold famously described Shelley as a 'beautiful and ineffectual angel'. This position contrasted strongly with the judgement of the previous generation who knew Shelley as a skeptic and radical.

Many of Shelley's works remained unpublished or little known after his death, with longer pieces such as A Philosophical View of Reform existing only in manuscript till the 1920s. This contributed to the Victorian idea of him as a minor lyricist. With the inception of formal literary studies in the early 20th century and the slow rediscovery and re-evaluation of his oeuvre by scholars such as K.N. Cameron, Donald H. Reiman and Harold Bloom, the modern idea of Shelley could not be more different.

Shelley Memorial, University College, Oxford. Sculpture by Edward Onslow Ford (1852-1901). Photo by Jonathan Bowen, 2005. Licensed by Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Foot, in his Red Shelley, has documented the pivotal role Shelley's works — especially Queen Mab — have played in the genesis of British radicalism. Although Shelley's works were banned from respectable Victorian households, his political writings were pirated by men such as Richard Carlile who regularly went to jail for printing 'seditious and blasphemous libel' (i.e. material proscribed by the government), and these cheap pirate editions reached hundreds of activists and workers throughout the 19th century.

Only 2 genuine portraits of Shelley are extant, and neither is satisfactory. The earlier, a miniature, was taken when he was only 13 or 14, and is authenticated by its strong and undesigned resemblance to miniatures of the Pilfold family. The later portrait, painted by Miss Curran at Rome in 1819, was left in a flat and unfinished state. "I was on the point of burning it before I left Italy," the artist told Mrs. Shelley; "I luckily saved it just as the fire was scorching."

In the late 19th century, 2 splendid monuments were erected to Shelley by the piety of his son and daughter-in-law: 1 is in Christchurch minster, Hampshire; the other, designed by Onslow Ford, R.A., is at University College, Oxford.

20th century

Shelley memorial fountain, Horsham, UK. Photo by 'Peter Cox. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Geograph.org.

14 of Shelley's poems ("Hymn of Pan," "The Invitation," "Hellas," "To a Skylark," "The Moon," "Ode to the West Wind," "The Indian Serenade," "Night," "From the Arabic," "Lines," "To ——," "The Question," "Remorse." and "Music, when Soft Voices die") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

He was admired by C.S. Lewis, Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Isadora Duncan, Upton Sinclair, and William Butler Yeats. Samuel Barber, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Roger Quilter, Howard Skempton, John Vanderslice and Ralph Vaughan Williams composed music based on his poems.

In other countries such as India, Shelley's works both in the original and in translation have influenced poets such as Rabindranath Tagore(Citation needed) and Jibanananda Das. A pirated copy of Prometheus Unbound dated 1835 is said to have been seized in that year by customs at Bombay.

A memorial to Keats and Shelley was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, by then-Poet Laureate John Masefield in 1954.

21st century

In 2005 the University of Delaware Press published an extensive 2-volume biography by James Bieri. In 2008 the Johns Hopkins University Press published Bieri's 856-page 1-volume biography, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A biography.

In 2007, John Lauritsen published his book The Man Who Wrote "Frankenstein" in which he argued that Percy Bysshe Shelley's contributions to the novel were much more extensive than had previously been assumed. It has been known and not disputed that Shelley wrote the Preface — although uncredited — and that he contributed at least 4,000–5,000 words to the novel. Lauritsen sought to show that Shelley was the primary author of the novel.

In 2008, Shelley was credited as the co-author of Frankenstein by Charles E. Robinson in a new edition of the novel entitled The Original Frankenstein published by the Bodleian Library in Oxford and by Random House in the U.S. Charles E. Robinson determined that Percy Bysshe Shelley was the co-author of the novel: "He made very significant changes in words, themes and style. The book should now be credited as 'by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley'."

In popular culture

In fiction

Julian Rathbone's 2002 novel A Very English Agent, about a 19th century government spy Charles Boylan, carries a lengthy section on Shelley's time in Italy, in which Boylan tampers with Shelley's boat on orders from the British government, thus causing his death. Rathbone though has stated that he is "a novelist, not a historian" and that his work is very much a piece of fiction.

Shelley also features prominently in The Stress of Her Regard, a 1989 novel by Tim Powers which proposes a secret history connecting the English Romantic writers with the mythology of vampires and lamia.

He also makes an appearance in Jude Morgan's 2005 novel Passion, along with Byron, Keats, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and a wealth of other English Romantic figures, although the novel's main focus is the lives of the women behind the famous poets: Lady Caroline Lamb, Augusta Leigh, Mary Shelley, and Fanny Brawne. Mary and Percy Shelley also appear in a 2006 novel AngelMonster, by Veronica Bennet. This book is a fictional version of Mary's and Percy's elopement and the series of depressing events.

Shelley appears in Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss. The book is a time-travel romance featuring Mary Shelley. A movie was made, based on the novel, directed by Roger Corman and starring John Hurt and Bridget Fonda, in 1990. Shelley makes an appearance in the alternative history novel The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Referenced only in passing by another character, in the novel's story he does not drown in Italy, but lives to become a fierce critic (and perhaps saboteur) of Lord Byron's pro-industrial 'Radical party' government, for which he is arrested, declared insane, and placed in a madhouse.

Shelley is portrayed as befriending cavalry officer Matthew Hervey while the latter is in Rome with his sister trying to cope with the death of his wife, in the 4th of Allan Mallinson's novels in the Hervey canon, A Call to Arms (2002). A friendship between Shelley (social subversive, moral outcast) and Hervey (pattern of martial loyalty and religious rectitude, albeit questioned in his bereavement) seems at first view unlikely. But each sees in the other a good man, and ultimately their agreement, often unspoken, on the travails and truths of the human condition cements the bond between them.

Events in Shelley's and Byron's relationship at the house on Lake Geneva in 1816 have been fictionalized in film three times. He is played as a minor character in: a 1986 British production, Gothic, directed by Ken Russell, and starring Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, and Natasha Richardson; and a 1988 Spanish production, Rowing with the Wind (Remando al viento), starring Lizzie McInnerny as Mary Shelley and Hugh Grant as Lord Byron. Both these movies deal mostly with Mary Shelley's creation of the Frankenstein novel, while Percy tends to be quite a minor character in both films.

Shelley is the main character in a movie entitled Haunted Summer, made in 1988, starring Laura Dern and Eric Stoltz.

The 1970s and 1980s Thames Television sitcom Shelley made many references to the poet.

Howard Brenton's play, Bloody Poetry, 1st performed at the Haymarket Theater in Leicester in 1984, concerns itself with the complex relationships and rivalries between Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Byron. Shelley's cremation at Viareggio and the removal of his heart by Trelawny are described in Tennessee Williams' play Camino Real by a fictionalized Lord Byron.

Percy, Mary and her sister Claire are some of the main characters in the novel, The Vampyre: The Secret History of Lord Byron, by Tom Holland (1995). The story concerns Lord Byron, poet and friend of Percy Shelley. Their meeting and the growth of their friendship are described, along with a hypothetical account of the time the foursome shared in Switzerland. Holland provides a fictional conclusion to the mysteries that surround Shelley's death.

Shelley's death and his claims of having met a Doppelganger served as inspiration for the 1978 short story "Paper Boat", written by Tanith Lee. Shelley is also the main character in Bulgarian poet Pencho Slaveykov's philosophical poem, Heart of Hearts.

Shelley's Prometheus Unbound is quoted by Captain Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the episode "Skin of Evil". "A great poet once said, All spirits are enslaved that serve things evil."

Shelley appears as himself in Peter Ackroyd's novel The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. In this, Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein is portrayed as one of Shelley's close friends during his early life and marriage to Harriet, in an entertaining fictional nod to the doppelganger rumour.

Shelley is also the principal model for Marmion Herbert, one of the two male protagonists in Benjamin Disraeli's novel Venetia (1837); the other protagonist Lord Cadurcis is based on Lord Byron. Shelley's poem, "The Indian Serenade", is recited in Chosen, a House of Night novel by P.C. Cast.

In the 1995 novel "Shelley's Heart" by Charles McCarry, Shelley is the inspiration for a secret society that operates at the highest levels of government and is responsible for stealing a presidential election. The members of the society identify each other with the question and answer: What did Trelawny snatch from the funeral pyre at Viareggio? ¬– Shelley’s heart.

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters mentions Shelley in the poem "Percy Bysshe Shelley" as the namesake of the speaker and that his ashes "were scattered near the pyramid of caius cestius / Somewhere near Rome."

In video games

A serial killer, in L.A. Noire, uses excerpts from Shelley to play with detectives and provide clues that ultimately lead to the killer.

Publications

Poetry

• Original Poetry: By Victor and Cazire (by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Elizabeth Shelley). Worthing, UK: C. & W. Phillips, for J.J. Stockdale, London, 1810.
• Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson: Being poems found amongst the papers of that noted female who attempted the life of the King in 1786 (Edited by John Fitzvictor) (by Shelley & Thomas Jefferson Hogg). Oxford, UK: J. Munday, 1810.
• Queen Mab: A philosophical poem. London: Printed by P.B. Shelley, 1813; New York: W. Baldwin, 1821.
• Alastor; or, The spirit of solitude; and other poems. London: Printed for Baldwin, Craddock & Joy and Carpenter & Son, by S. Hamilton, 1816.
• Laon and Cythna; or, The revolution of the golden city: A vision of the nineteenth century. London: B. M'Millan, for Sherwood, Neely & Jones / C. & J. Ollier, 1818 [1817]
  • revised as The Revolt of Islam; A poem, in twelve cantos. London: B. M'Millan, for C. & J. Ollier, 1817.
• Rosalind and Helen: A modern eclogue; with other poems. London: C. & J. Ollier, 1819.
• Prometheus Unbound: A lyrical drama in four acts; with other poems. London: C. & J. Ollier, 1820.
• Epipsychidion: Verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate Lady Emilia V_____, now imprisoned in the convent of _____. London: C. & J. Ollier, 1821.
• Adonais: An elegy on the death of John Keats. Pisa, Italy: With the types of Didot, 1821;
  • Cambridge, UK: Printed by W. Metcalfe & sold by Gee & Bridges, 1829.
• Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (edited by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley). London: Printed for John & Henry L. Hunt, 1824.
• The Masque of Anarchy. A poem (edited by Leigh Hunt). London: Edward Moxon, 1832.
• The Minor Poems. London: Edward Moxon, 1846; Boston: Little, Brown, 1878.
• A Selection from the Poems (edited by Mathilde Blind). Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1872.
• The Wandering Jew: A poem (edited by Bertram Dobell). London: Shelley Society, 1887.
• Shelley's Nature Poems (illustrated by William Hyde). London: Hutchinson, 1911.
• Poems, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems (edited by Thomas Hutchinson). London: Henry Frowde / London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1912.
• Selected Poems. London: Humphrey Milford / London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1913.

Plays

• The Cenci: A tragedy, in five acts. Leghorn, Italy: Printed for C. & J. Ollier, London, 1819.
• Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the tyrant: A tragedy, in two acts; translated from the original Doric. London: Published for the author by J. Johnston, 1820.
• Hellas: A Lyrical Drama. London: C. & J. Ollier, 1822.

Novels

• Zastrozzi, A romance. London: Printed for G. Wilkie & J. Robinson, 1810.
• St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A romance (as "a Gentleman of the University of Oxford"). London: Printed for J.J. Stockdale, 1811.

Non-fiction

• The Necessity of Atheism. Worthing: Printed by C. & W. Phillips, 1811.
• An Address, to the Irish People. Dublin, 1812.
• Proposals for An Association of those Philanthropists, Who Convinced of the Inadequacy of the Moral and Political State of Ireland to Produce Benefits which Are Nevertheless Attainable Are Willing to Unite to Accomplish Its Regeneration. Dublin: Printed by I. Eton, 1812.
• A Letter to Lord Ellenborough, Occasioned by the Sentence which He Passed on Mr. D. I. Easton, As Publisher of the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Barnstaple, UK: Printed by Syle, 1812.
• A Refutation of Deism: in a Dialogue. London: Printed by Schulze & Dean, 1814.
• A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote Throughout the Kingdom (as "The Hermit of Marlow"). London: Printed for C. & J. Ollier, 1817.
• Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments (edited by Mary Shelley). (2 volumes), London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Volume I, Volume II.
• "Essay on Christianity", in Shelley Memorials (edited by Lady Jane Shelley). London: Smith, Elder, 1859.
• Essays and Letters (edited by Ernest Rhys). London: Walter Scott, 1886.
• A Philosophical View of Reform (edited with introduction & appendix by T.W. Rolleston). London & New York: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1920.
• A Defence of Poetry, and other essays. Project Gutenberg, 2004.

Collected editions

• Works: With his life. (2 volumes), London: John Ascham, 1834. Volume I, Volume II.
• Poetical Works (edited by Mary Shelley). (4 volumes), London: Edward Moxon, 1839; (1 volume), Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1839.
• Works: From the original editions: Fourth series. London: Chatto & Windus, 1875.
• Poetical Works: Including Various Additional Pieces From MS. and Other Sources (edited by William Michael Rossetti (2 volumes), London: E. Moxon, 1870; New York: T. Crowell, 1878.
• Complete Poetical Works (edited by Thomas Hutchinson). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904) Volume I, Volume II, Volume III.
  • revised (by G.M. Matthews). London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
• Complete Works (edited by Roger Ingpen & Walter Edwin Peck). (10 volumes), London: Ernest Benn (The Julian Edition), 1926-1930.
• "Shelley's Translations from Plato: A critical edition," in James Notopoulous, The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1949.
• Shelley's Prose; or, The trumpet of a prophecy (edited by David L. Clark). Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1954; corrected, 1966.
• Posthumous Poems of Shelley: Mary Shelley's Fair Copy Book, Bodleian Ms. Shelley Adds. d.9 Collated with the Holographs and the Printed Texts (edited by Irving Massey). Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1969.
• Shelley's Poetry and Prose (edited by Donald Reiman and Sharon Powers). New York: Norton, 1977.

Letters

• Select Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (edited by Richard Garnett). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1882.
• Letters From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchener (edited by T.J. Wise and Harry Buxton Forman). (2 volumes), London: privately printed, 1890.
• Letters from Percy Bysshe Shelley to William Godwin (edited by T.J. Wise and Harry Buxton Forman). (2 volumes), London: privately printed, 1891. Volume I, Volume II.
• The Best Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (edited by Shirley Carter Hughson). Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1892; London: William Heinemann, 1909.
• Letters from Percy Bysshe Shelley: To Robert Southey and other correspondents. New York: privately printed, 1886.
• The Shelley Correspondence in the Bodleian Library: Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley and others, mainly published from the collection presented to the library by Lady Shelley in 1892 (edited by H.R. Hill). Oxford, UK: Printed for the Bodleian Library by John Johnson, 1926.
• Shelley and His Circle, 1773-1822, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library (8 volumes: volumes 1-4 edited by Kenneth Neill Cameron; volumes 5-8, edited by Donald H. Reiman). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961-1986.
• The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (edited by Frederick L. Jones). (2 volumes), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Notebooks

• Note books of Percy Bysshe Shelley, From the Originals in the Library of W.K. Bixby (edited by H. Buxton Forman). (3 volumes), St. Louis, MO: Privately printed, 1911.
• The Esdaile Notebook. A volume of early poems (edited by Kenneth Neale Cameron from the manuscript in the Carol H. Pforzheimer Library). New York: Knopf, 1964.
  • The Esdaile Poems (edited from the manuscripts by Neville Rogers). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1966.
• The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics. Shelley (edited by Donald H. Reiman). (3 volumes: The Esdaile Notebook, The Masque of Anarchy, Hellas: A Lyrical Drama), New York & London: Garland, 1985.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Poems by Shelley

Love's Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

Music, When Soft Voices Die by Percy Bysshe Shelley - Poetry Reading

Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley - Poetry Reading

The Cloud By Percy Bysshe Shelley - Poem

1. Adonais
2. The cold earth slept below
3. Ode to the West Wind
4. Ozymandias
5. To a Skylark

See also

• Late Romantics
• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

References

•  Garnett, Richard (1897) "Shelley, Percy Bysshe" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 52 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 31-40  Wikisource, Web, Mar. 14, 2021.
•  Rosetti, William Michael (1911). "Shelley, Percy Bysshe". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 827-832.  Wikisource, Web, Mar. 14, 2021.
• Edmund Blunden, Shelley: A life story, Viking Press, 1947.
• James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-8018-8861-1.
• Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1998.
• Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975.
• Meaker, M. J. Sudden Endings, 12 Profiles in Depth of Famous Suicides, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1964 p. 67-93: "The Deserted Wife: Harriet Westbrook Shelley".
• Maurois, Andre, Ariel ou la vie de Shelley, Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1923
• St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: A Biography of a Family. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.
• St Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Hay, Daisy. Young Romantics: the Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives, Bloomsbury, 2010.
• Owchar, Nick. "The Siren's Call: An epic poet as Mary Shelley's co-author. A new edition of 'Frankenstein' shows the contributions of her husband, Percy." Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2009.
• Rhodes, Jerry. "New paperback by UD professor offers two versions of Frankenstein tale." UDaily, University of Delaware, September 30, 2009. Charles E. Robinson: "These italics used for Percy Shelley's words make even more visible the half-dozen or so places where, in his own voice, he made substantial additions to the 'draft' of Frankenstein."
• Pratt, Lynda. "Who wrote the original Frankenstein? Mary Shelley created a monster out of her 'waking dream' – but was it her husband Percy who 'embodied its ideas and sentiments'?" The Sunday Times, October 29, 2008.
• Adams, Stephen. "Percy Bysshe Shelley helped wife Mary write Frankenstein, claims professor: Mary Shelley received extensive help in writing Frankenstein from her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading academic has claimed." Telegraph, August 24, 2008. Charles E. Robinson: "He made very significant changes in words, themes and style. The book should now be credited as 'by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley'."
• Shelley, Mary, with Percy Shelley. The Original Frankenstein. Edited with an Introduction by Charles E. Robinson. NY: Random House Vintage Classics, 2008. ISBN 978-0-307-47442-1
• Mulhallen, Jacqueline, "The Theatre of Shelley", Open Book Publishers, 2011.

Fonds

• A Guide to the Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript Material in the Pforzheimer Collection

External links

Poems

• 5 poems by Shelley: "My soul is an enchanted boat," "Love's Philosophy," "To the Moon," "Ode to the West Wind," "The cold earth slept below"
• Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822 at the Poetry Foundation
• Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse: "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," from "Adonais"
• Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "Hymn of Pan," "The Invitation," "Hellas," "To a Skylark," "The Moon," "Ode to the West Wind," "The Indian Serenade," "Night," "From the Arabic," "Lines," "To ——," "The Question," "Remorse." "Music, when Soft Voices die"
• Percy Bysshe Shelley profile & 15 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822) (40 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Shelley in The English Poets: An anthology: Stanzas - August 1814," Extract from Alastor; or, The spirit of solitude, "Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples," "Ode to the West Wind," "Hymn of Pan," "The Cloud," "To a Skylark," Extract from Epipsychidion, "Adonais; an Elegy on the Death of John Keats," "To Night," "To ——": ‘Music, when soft voices die’, "A Lament," "To ——": ‘One word is too often profaned’, Last Chorus of Hellas, Lines: ‘When the lamp is shattered’, "To Jane - The Recollection"
  • Extracts from Prometheus Unbound: Semichorus I of Spirits, Semichorus II, Voice in the Air, Singing
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) info & 26 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at Wikisource
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at PoemHunter (324 poems)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at Poetry Nook (563 poems)
• Selected Poems of Shelley at PoetSeers.org

Audio / video

• Percy Bysshe Shelley poems etc. at YouTube
• Selected Poems and Poetry (read by Leonard Wilson) at LibriVox
• A talk on Shelley's politics (MP3) by Paul Foot: part 1, part 2

Books

• Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley at Project Gutenberg
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at the Online Books Page
• Electronic texts
• Plato's Ion, the Shelley translation
• Percy Bysshe Shelley and more by Shelley at Amazon.com
• Works by or about Percy Bysshe Shelley in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

About

• Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley at the British Library
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at NNDB
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at Spartacus.edu
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at Biography.com
• "the Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley" at History in an Hour
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) at the Victorian Web
• Percy Bysshe Shelley Resources
• Percy Bysshe Shelley by John Addington Symonds at Project Gutenberg
• Online exhibition of Shelley's notebooks, objects, letters and drafts alongside artefacts of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and William Godwin
• A pedigree of the Shelley family

Shelley by John Addington Symonds This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Shelley, Percy Bysshe
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Shelley, Percy Bysshe