POET

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

BIOGRAPHY

Born into a wealthy family in Sussex, England, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was expelled from Oxford for writing The Necessity of Atheism. His radical lifestyle at times detracted from the appreciation of his work. He called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” In Shelley’s short life — he drowned while sailing at age 29 — he produced gorgeous lyrical poetry quintessential of the Romantic Era. He is perhaps best remembered for the mythical poem Prometheus Unbound and for Adonais, an elegy to his friend John Keats.