Percy Bysshe Shelley

Born in Sussex in 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley became one of the major poets of the second generation of English Romantic writers, alongside John Keats and Lord Byron. He was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford, where he was expelled after the circulation of The Necessity of Atheism, an early sign of the bold and controversial ideas that would shape both his life and work.

Shelley wrote lyric poems and longer visionary works marked by musical language, radical politics, and a restless imagination. Among his best-known works are Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Prometheus Unbound, and Adonais. During his lifetime, his outspoken religious and political views limited his reputation, but his influence grew strongly after his death.

He married Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and spent important years in Switzerland and Italy. In 1822, he drowned at sea off the Italian coast at the age of 29. His life was brief, but his poetry has continued to speak to readers through its passion, idealism, and sense of urgent possibility.