Regency Man Monday – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (8/4/1792-7/8/1822)

Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets. Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron. His own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Shelley is perhaps best known for his poems Ozymandias and To a Skylark. His other major works include long, visionary poems and the visionary verse dramas The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820). Shelley did not live to see success and influence, although these reach down to the present day not only in literature, but in major movements in social and political thought.

Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets such as Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, Karl Marx, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan.

-Post modified from Wikipedia article

For more information on Shelley and to browse his works you can visit these links:

• Percy Bysshe Shelley at Poets.org
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at The Poetry Foundation
• Percy Bysshe Shelley at Biography