| Name: |
Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Place of Birth: |
|
| Place of Death: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Gender: |
|
| Occupations: |
|
The English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) ranks as one of the greatest lyric poets in the history of English literature.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place near Horsham, Sussex, on August 4, 1792. He was the first son of a wealthy country squire. Shelley as a boy felt persecuted by his hardheaded and practical-minded father, and this abuse may have first sparked the flame of protest which, during his Eton years (1804-1810), earned him the name of "Mad Shelley." In the course of his first and only year at Oxford (1810-1811), Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg issued a pamphlet provocatively entitled The Necessity of Atheism. Their "atheism" was little more than a hieroglyph connoting their general revulsion against establishment authoritarianism. However, both students were expelled from the university.
This event--soon combined with the influence of Political Justice by anarchist reformer William Godwin--merely intensified Shelley's rebelliousness against accepted notions of law and order, both in his private life and in the body politic.
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 1,539 words (approx. 5 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Percy Bysshe Shelley Access Pass.
