Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is one of the most prominent Romantic poets, alongside Lord Byron. He is best remembered for his poetry and complicated love life, yet his controversial ideas were ahead of his time. He promoted free thought, free love and human rights. Shelley died tragically young but his work continues to resonate today. Let’s see what kind of life he lived.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: biography

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born into a political family in Sussex. His father planned a career in Parliament (politics) for his son. However, Shelley had other ideas – he was by all accounts a bright, mischievous and imaginative child, and showed an early inclination to write. After a rebellious, unhappy childhood, Shelley got expelled from Oxford for writing and distributing a pamphlet called ‘The Necessity for Atheism’, quarrelled with his father and eloped with Harriet Westbrook.

Harriet was the daughter of a successful tavern owner. They had two children but the marriage was not a happy one. Harriet’s older sister Eliza was living with them, and it seems her presence did not help the situation. The marriage was growing increasingly troubled. Eventually, Shelley came into contact with William Godwin, whom he helped financially, and became a regular visitor to the Godwin household.

Through William Godwin, Shelley met his and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter – Mary Godwin. While William Godwin was a progressive man, he was more than a little put out when Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin ran away together to Europe, along with Mary’s step-sister (Jane) Claire Clairemont. As he complained to a friend at the time:

(William Godwin, Letter to John Taylor, Aug 27, 1814)

Mrs Godwin (Mary’s stepmother) followed the trio as far as Calais and was unsuccessful in her attempt to persuade Mary to return home.

Shelley’s early attempts at poetry proved unsuccessful. He had made himself unpopular with his pamphlets on atheism, free-living, and human rights. He was attempting to break both political and social conventions in a period when Europe was experiencing revolutions and wars.

After Shelley’s grandfather died, financial circumstances improved sufficiently for the Shelleys, and they settled in London for a while. Shelley produced 'Alastor, or Spirit of Solitude' (1816) here, and in the summer of the same year, he and Mary Shelley joined Lord Byron in Switzerland. While staying at Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein (published in 1818) and P. B. Shelley produced two poems:

• 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'
• 'Mont Blanc'

Percy Bysshe Shelley: poems

‘Alastor’ (1816)

‘Alastor’ is a poem about a poet’s journey. At first, the poet is detached from the people around him, but then becomes increasingly restless after a dream. He continues his journey by following a river until he reaches the edge of a mountain and dies alone in a quiet spot.

Shelley explains the poem in a preface. It is meant to warn of the dangers of shutting out love, including love of the individual and love of humanity. He refers to two groups of people:

• the self-seeking, unimaginative ‘torpid’ ones who shut their minds to love and therefore die spiritually
• the intellectuals who, although capable of love, shut themselves away from it

Note: 'Alastor' is presented as a poem about the human mind, but might also be partly based on Shelley's own life:

(P.B.Shelley, ‘Alastor’, 1816)

The alienated home could refer to his separation from Harriet. His elopement with Mary is set also abroad – in ‘undiscovered lands’.

'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' (1816)

'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' contains a reference to a moment in Shelley’s early years when he decides to devote himself to humanity and deliver it from the ‘dark slavery’ of superstition:

(Shelley, excerpt from 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty', 1818)

It seems this moment of decision came after he read William Godwin’s ‘Political Justice’. As Shelley wrote to Godwin:

(Shelley, letter to W. Godwin, Jan 1812)

'Mont Blanc' (1816)

'Mont Blanc' was inspired by a trip to the mountain Shelley took in the summer of 1816. It is one of the most difficult of Shelley’s poems to understand and has been interpreted in many different ways. It is a philosophical poem containing many descriptions of the natural surrounding which clearly made a deep impression on the poet, as he describes it to his friend, Thomas Love Peacock:

(Shelley, Letter to T.L.Peacock, 1816)

The detailed descriptions in the poem act as a distraction from the atheistic message it contains. It opens with the philosophical aspect:

(Shelley. extract from 'Mont Blanc', 1816)

The second part opens with:

‘Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—’ and goes on to describe the poet’s response to the ravine. The structure suggests that both parts are meant to be read side by side.

Here’s what Cameron has to say about its interpretation:

(K.N.Cameron, Shelley:The Golden Years, 1974)

‘Ozymandias’ 1818

In 1818, two important works were published: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias’:

The Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni was bringing ancient relics from Egypt to the British Museum. All of London was abuzz with talk of their imminent arrival from the Land of the Pharaohs (it actually took Belzoni over a year to transport them). Among the finds was a statue of Rameses II. A fresh interest in Ancient Egypt and its civilisation was growing, and Shelley was no exception.

Shelley was fascinated by the idea of this colossal statue of Rameses discovered in the sands of Egypt and wrote the poem as part of a competition with Horace Smith. 'Ozymandias' is brief, compact and rich with imagery of an ancient power whose former supremacy still imposes despite the passing of time:

(Shelley, extracts from 'Ozymandias', 1818)

'Ode to the West Wind' (1819)

Shelley wrote 'Ode to the West Wind' during a period of intense personal loss. His daughter Clara had died followed by his son William earlier the same year, and Mary Shelley was suffering from depression as a result. The Ode is partly a reflection on this, but it also has social and historical references including one to the end of the French Revolution, which he believes must be followed by a new order:

The poet believes his works will help inspire this new world order with the lines:

And he closes with a message of hope that the new order will be soon:

(Shelley, 'Ode to the West Wind,' 1819)

‘Adonais’, 1821

In 1821, Keats died in Rome and Shelley composed 'Adonais' in his memory. Adonais is one of his more complex poems. It is an elegy on the death of Keats and refers to the myth of Adonais (or Adonis), killed by a wild boar, and mourned by Urania (Venus). It is also about John Keats, and is an attack on the critic who harshly criticised Keats’ poems shortly before his death. Finally it is also about Shelley, and his shared experience of persecution. Its closing verse contains allusions to ships (‘bark’) and sailing ‘darkly, fearfully, afar’ eerily mirrors Shelley’s own death by drowning the following year:

(Shelley, extract from 'Adonais', 1821)

Percy Bysshe Shelley's death

1n 1822, inspired by news of the Greek War of Independence against the Turkish empire, Shelley completed a verse play called 'Hellas'. There was support for the Greek War across Europe and America. The Romantics, including Lord Byron and Shelley were staunch supporters and Shelley wrote 'Hellas' as a rallying cry for England to publicly support Greece in its struggle for independence.

In April, the Shelleys moved from Pisa to Lerici, and in August, after a fateful visit to Byron at Livorno, Shelley drowned after his yacht went down in a summer storm. Shelley’s body drifted ashore ten days later and he was cremated on the shore of Viareggio. So ended the tumultuous life of P. B. Shelley, whose radical intellect and fierce sense of justice made him one of the great Romantic intellects who broke with convention in the hope of forging a new and better world.

Fig. 1 - The Funeral of Shelley (1889)Louis Édouard Fournier.

Spooky Fact

Recommended titles:

Memoirs of Shelley, T.L. Peacock (1977)

The Young Shelley; Genesis of a Radical K.N.Cameron (1973)

Shelley: The Golden Years, K.N.Cameron (1974)