Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

• 4 August 1792 8 July 1822

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• Major works are long visionary poems
• Approximately 50 readers as his audience, it is
  said that he made no more than 40 pounds from his
  writings.

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• His father was Sir Timothy Shelley, a Whig Member
  of Parliament, and his mother, a Sussex landowner
  
• Born at Field Place in Horsham, England
• The eldest of the children
• Received his early education at home
• On 10 April 1810, he matriculated at University
  College, Oxford
• Expelled from Oxford on 25 March 1811

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• After being expelled, he eloped to Scotland with
  the 16-year-old schoolgirl Harriet Westbrook
• Visited Ireland shortly afterward and wrote his
  Address to the Irish People
• On 28 July 1814, Shelley abandoned his family and
  ran away with Mary (also 16, later author of
  Frankenstein)
• Sailed to Europe, crossed France, and settled in
  Switzerland
• After six weeks they returned to England
• In the autumn of 1815 he wrote Alastor, or The
  Spirit of Solitude
• Shelley's estranged wife Harriet drowned herself
  and custody of the children was given to foster
  parents

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• Contact with Byron encouraged Shelley to write
  again (Julian and Maddalo)
• The Shelleys travelled around various Italian
  cities
• Spent the summer of 1819 writing a tragedy, The
  Cenci, in Livorno
• Inspired by the death of Keats, in 1821 Shelley
  wrote the elegy Adonais
• Shelley, Byron and Hunt wanted to establish a
  journal, that would be called The Liberal

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• On 8 July 1822 Shelley drowned
• A mass of evidence that Shelley may have been
  murdered
• Was cremated on the beach near Viareggio
• After his death The Courier gloated "Shelley,
  the writer of some infidel poetry, has been
  drowned, now he knows whether there is a God or
  not.
• Shelleys heart was later buried with the body of
  Sir Percy Florence Shelley, his son
• His grave bears the Latin inscription, Cor
  Cordium, and a few lines of "Ariel's Song" from
  Shakespeare's The Tempest

Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a
sea-change Into something rich and strange.
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• Thank you for your attention!