Percy Bysshe Shelley (the “Bysshe” from his grandfather, a peer of the realm) was one of the major English Romantic poets. He was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Warnham, West Sussex, England and was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, a well-to-do landowner and his wife, Elizabeth. Percy stood in line not only to inherit his grandfather’s considerable estate but also to sit in Parliament one day. He had four younger sisters and one much younger brother.
Shelley’s early childhood was sheltered and mostly happy. At age six, he was sent to a day school where he displayed an impressive memory and gift for languages. At ten, he was enrolled at Syon House Academy near London, where he was bullied and often lonely. Shelley reacted to this with violent anger and a determination to devote himself to opposing every form of tyranny.
He then attended Eton College where he made a number of friends and embarked on his literary career. His “Gothic” horror novel, Zastrozzi, was published during his last term there. He enrolled at Oxford where he spent more hours reading and conducting scientific experiments in the laboratory he’d set up in his room than attending lectures. At Eton he became increasingly politicised and published a series of anonymous political poems, eventually resulting in his expulsion in March 1811.
At this time, Shelley met Harriet Westbrook and they corresponded frequently, before eloping to Scotland in 1811. He was 19 and she was 16. Although Sir Timothy eventually settled enough income on the young couple for their modest comfort, he refused ever to see his son again. During this period Shelley continued to read incessantly consolidating his radical political and social opinions.
Two years later he published his first long serious work, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem. Harriet had given him two children, but Shelley fell in love with Mary Godwin, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. He travelled to Europe with Mary in 1814, and after Harriet’s suicide, they married. Mary gave him four children, though only one survived childhood.
Shelley believed in free love, he was a vegetarian (most unusual in that era), he detested the army, the church, the royals, and any sort of authority. His great sonnet Ozymandias is an attack on power, showing how it corrupts, and how useless it ultimately is. His The Masque of Anarchy is an indictment of the government of his day and the brutal treatment of protesting workers.
On 8 July 1822, just before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm on the Gulf of Spezia.
A radical in his political and social views, Percy Bysshe Shelley did not achieve fame during his short life but is now regarded as one of the greatest of all poets.
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