Early Life and Education
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792 in Horsham, Sussex. From childhood, he showed a sharp memory and a love for learning. At Syon House Academy, he faced bullying and strange nightmares, yet discovered a passion for science, experimenting with electricity, acids, and even gunpowder.
In 1804, he entered Eton College. His classmates bullied him relentlessly, earning him the nickname “Mad Shelley.” His curiosity often turned dangerous—he once shocked a teacher with electricity and blew up a tree stump with gunpowder. By his later years at Eton, he was known as a strong classical scholar and had already written his first novel, Zastrozzi.
Oxford Years and Expulsion
In 1810, Percy Bysshe Shelley joined University College, Oxford. Instead of lectures, he preferred conducting experiments and devouring radical books. His closest companion became Thomas Jefferson Hogg, with whom he shared anti-Christian and republican ideas.
In 1811, Shelley published The Necessity of Atheism, a bold pamphlet that he sent to bishops and academics. When he refused to defend it before authorities, he and Hogg were expelled. His father, furious, cut off his financial support.
Political and Religious Views
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the most radical voices of his time. Inspired by Rousseau, Paine, Godwin, and Wollstonecraft, he argued for republicanism, free speech, parliamentary reform, and Catholic emancipation. His political poem Queen Mab spread his revolutionary message and made him a target of government suspicion.
Religiously, Shelley was an outspoken atheist. Drawing from Holbach’s The System of Nature, he saw Christianity as an instrument of control. Many of his works had to be censored before publication to avoid charges of blasphemy.
Personal Beliefs and Lifestyle
Percy Bysshe Shelley rejected traditional morality. He believed in free love, insisting that relationships should last only as long as affection remained. He viewed forced marriage as a breeding ground for jealousy and unhappiness.
In 1812, Shelley became a vegetarian. Influenced by classical thinkers like Pythagoras and Plutarch, as well as John Frank Newton’s The Return to Nature, he promoted a plant-based diet as healthier, more ethical, and fairer to the land. His advocacy later influenced the Vegetarian Society in England.
First Marriage and Travels
Percy Bysshe Shelley met Harriet Westbrook in 1810 and eloped with her the following year when she was sixteen. Both families opposed the marriage, and financial support was cut off. The couple lived on borrowed money, moving frequently.
During these years, Shelley immersed himself in activism, writing pamphlets such as An Address to the Irish People and Declaration of Rights. His outspoken politics often attracted hostility, police attention, and financial strain.
Mary Godwin and the Literary Circle
In 1814, Percy Bysshe Shelley met Mary Godwin, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. They fell deeply in love and fled to Europe with Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. Their travels inspired Shelley’s Alastor (1816).
The summer of 1816 in Geneva with Lord Byron proved pivotal. Mary began Frankenstein, while Percy Bysshe Shelley composed Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Mont Blanc. That year also brought tragedy—Harriet Westbrook died by suicide, and Mary’s half-sister Fanny also passed away. Shelley and Mary married soon after.
Back in London, Percy Bysshe Shelley entered the circle of Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, and Keats. During this period, he wrote Laon and Cythna (later revised as The Revolt of Islam) and his famous sonnet Ozymandias.
Later Years in Italy
In 1818, the Shelleys moved to Italy seeking health, escape from debt, and freedom from scandal. Their time abroad was marked by grief—two of their children, Clara and William, died—and by extraordinary creativity.
In Italy, Percy Bysshe Shelley produced masterpieces including Prometheus Unbound (1820), The Cenci (1819), The Mask of Anarchy (1819), and Adonais (1821), his elegy for Keats. He also wrote Epipsychidion, inspired by Emilia Viviani, reflecting his unconventional views on love.
Though rumors circulated about affairs and a possible child in Naples, Shelley’s poetry from this period cemented his place among the greatest Romantic poets.
Death at Sea
On 8 July 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned when his boat, the Don Juan, sank in a storm off the coast of Livorno, Italy. He was just 29 years old. His body was cremated on the beach at Viareggio, and his ashes were later interred in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery.
Legacy of Percy Bysshe Shelley
During his life, Shelley’s works sold poorly and critics focused more on his politics than his poetry. After his death, however, his reputation grew. Poets such as Browning, Swinburne, Hardy, and Yeats admired his lyrical power and revolutionary spirit.
By the twentieth century, Percy Shelley was firmly established as one of the leading voices of Romanticism. Today, his defiance of tradition, bold political vision, and timeless poems such as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, and To a Skylark continue to inspire readers worldwide.
Selected Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Zastrozzi (1810)
- Queen Mab (1813)
- Alastor (1816)
- Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1817)
- The Revolt of Islam (1818)
- Ozymandias (1818)
- The Cenci (1819)
- Ode to the West Wind (1819)
- The Mask of Anarchy (1819, pub. 1832)
- Prometheus Unbound (1820)
- To a Skylark (1820)
- Adonais (1821)
- Epipsychidion (1821)
- The Triumph of Life (unfinished, 1822)
Conclusion
Percy Bysshe Shelley lived a short but dazzling life, producing works that still shape literature and political thought. Though dismissed in his own day, he remains celebrated as a poet of rebellion, imagination, and truth. His legacy lies in the way he fused radical politics with lyrical beauty, leaving behind verses that echo with both the fire of revolution and the music of hope.