Percy Bysshe Shelley

EARLY LIFE 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4, 1792 at Field Place, Broadbridge Heath, two miles North West of Horsham, Sussex, England.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Alfred Clint (died 1883). 

Percy was the son of Sir Timothy Shelley, a rich landowner and MP, and his wife Elizabeth Pilfold. Percy had four younger sisters and one younger brother.

His father was son and heir to Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring, who made the family fortune by two runaway marriages both to heiresses and then obtained a baronetry for political considerations. Sir Timothy Shelley was a disciplinarian and a dictatorial father.

Percy's younger brother and sisters loved the stories he used to tell. As a child, he also enjoyed riding round his father's estate chatting to labourers and other workers.

Once he reached his teenage years, Percy's hobbies were astronomy, chemistry and electricity.  The youngster once tied a tomcat to the string of a kite he was flying in a thunderstorm to see if it would be electrocuted.

EDUCATION 

Percy Shelley received his early education at home, tutored by Reverend Thomas Edwards of Horsham.

In 1802 the 10-year-old Percy Shelley entered the Syon House Academy of Brentford, Middlesex as a border. During his time there he was bullied which made him a loner.

In 1804, the gentle Shelley entered Eton College, where the bullying continued. He was subjected to an almost daily mob torment at around noon by older boys, who tore his books from his hands and pulled and tore his clothes. His tormentors aptly called these incidents "Shelley-baits".

Shelley's unusual ideas and interest in electricity at Eton caused him to be nicknamed "Mad Shelley". With an electrical machine he had bought he charged up the doorknob and electrocuted Dr Bethel, the Classics Master. He also hired a travelling tinker to help him build a steam-organ which burst and nearly blew up Shelley and his tutor's house.

On April 10, 1810 Percy Shelley went to the University of Oxford (University College). Legend has it that he attended only one lecture at Oxford but frequently read for sixteen hours a day

The following year, Thomas Jefferson Hogg and him sent a radical anti-religious pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, to the heads of the colleges. Both students refused to answer questions about the pamphlet and were sent down.

Shelley could have been reinstated at Oxford, following the intervention of his father, had he recanted his avowed views. Shelley refused, which led to a total break between himself and his father.

CAREER 

Percey Bysshe Shelley was famed for his lyrical expressiveness and in the 19th century his poetry was considered the greatest since Shakespeare. However, in the 20th century his reputation went downhill.

Shelley's first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810), in which he vented his early atheistic worldview through the villain Zastrozzi.

In 1813 Percy Shelley wrote his long philosophically revolutionary anti religious poem Queen Mab,. in which he sees the only hope for this world as lying in reason, nature, morality and vegetarianism.

Percy Shelley's Ozymandias, his most famous short poem, was first published in Leigh Hunt's Examiner on January 11, 1818. The central theme of the work is the inevitable (unavoidable) ruin of leaders and empires. The message is that all leaders and the empires they build will always end up as nothing, however mighty they are.

Original publication

Shelley's groundbreaking verse drama The Cenci was composed by the poet at Rome and at Villa Valsovano near Livorno, Italy from May to August 5, 1819. The horrific tragedy, set in 1599 in Rome, tells the true story of a young woman executed for the pre-meditated killing of her tyrannical father. The play was not considered performable in its day due to its themes of incest and parental murder, and was not performed in public in England until 1922 when it was staged in London.

Prometheus Unbound a four-act lyrical drama by Percy Bysshe Shelley, is widely considered to be his masterpiece. First published in 1820,  it concerns the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus, who defied the gods and gave fire to humanity, for which he was subjected to eternal punishment and suffering at the hands of Zeus.

Portrait of Shelley Writing Prometheus Unbound in Italy, by Joseph Severn, 1845

Percy Shelley's poem To a Skylark was completed in late June 1820 and published accompanying his lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound. It was inspired by an evening walk in the country near Livorno, Italy, with his wife Mary Shelley, and describes the appearance and song of a skylark they come upon

Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc, was a poem, containing 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, which was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after Shelley heard of the death of his fellow romantic poet, John Keats. It is a pastoral elegy, in the English tradition of John Milton's Lycidas.

Adonais was read by Mick Jagger at the free Rolling Stones concert at Hyde Park Corner, London three days after the death of the rock group's co-founder, Brian Jones.

Epipsychidion was composed by Percy Shelley at Pisa, in early 1821, and addressed to Countess Teresa Viviani, the 19-year-old daughter of the governor of Pisa, who had been placed by her father in the Convent of Saint Anna. The poem celebrates Shelley's lifelong search for the perfect image of beauty in the earthly form of the women he has known.

BELIEFS 

Shelley was an anarchy theorist, anti monarchist and socialist who was obsessed with revolting against tyranny and has an utter disregard for convention. In 1812, he attempted to put into practice his ideas for saving the world by going up in a balloon and dropping pamphlets containing his essay A Declaration of Rights.

Shelley vehemently disapproved of meat eating as he felt it was an unnatural habit producing disease. He claimed that as humans don't have the teeth which predator animals have it is normal to assume we should not eat animal food. The poet wrote several essays advocating a vegetarian diet, including A Vindication of Natural Diet and On the Vegetable System of Diet.

Shelley believed people should consume only the food produced in their own native country because they are raised in that natural environment and are adapted to it. Consequently he refused to use Indian spices amongst other foreign foods.

Similarly, Shelley also considered that people should drink only the drink produced in their own native country for the same reason. Consequently he believed that the English should not drink wines from France, Portugal or Spain.

The poet was against any kind of strong drinks because they are not a natural product: He wrote "Drink no drink but water restored to its original purity by distillation."

RELATIONSHIPS 

Four months after being expelled from Oxford University, the 19-year-old Percy Shelley eloped to Scotland with 16- year-old merchant's daughter Harriet Westbrook, who was a pupil at the same boarding school as Shelley's sisters.

Harriet Westbrook

After their marriage on August 28, 1811, Shelley invited his college friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg to share their household - and also his wife, according to the poet's ideals of free love. When Harriet objected, Shelley abandoned this first attempt at open marriage and brought Harriet instead to England's Lake District, intending to write.

Shelley's father had planned a parliamentary career for young Percy and his plans for his son did not include a marriage to a simple merchant's daughter. Sir Timothy reacted by cutting off all communication with his son including his allowance. Shelley claimed he was "rescuing" Harriet from a tyrannical father. Shelley's allowance was later reinstated, but the two were never completely reconciled.

Percy and Harriet spent three years pursuing a nomadic existence moving between Keswick, Dublin, York Tremadoc in North Wales and Lynmouth in Devon.

After three years with Harriet, Shelley was unhappy in his marriage and often left his wife and two children alone while he visited anarchist philosopher William Godwin's home and bookshop in London. It was there that he first met Mary, the intelligent and well-educated daughter of Godwin and famed feminist educator and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who had died ten days after Mary's birth.

Reginald Easton's miniature of Mary Shelley

Shelley became enamoured when Mary made fun of his "sissyfied" name (Percy) and he responded by referring to Mary, "sassy wench."

On July 28, 1814 Shelley abandoned Harriet, who was pregnant with their son Charles, and eloped with 16-year-old Mary to Switzerland. The pair also bought Mary's 16-year-old step-sister Jane (later Claire) Clairmont, along for company.

After six weeks, homesick and destitute, the three young people returned to England. There they found that William Godwin, the champion and practitioner of free love, refused to speak to Mary or Shelley.

Percy and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin later published an account of this adventure as History of a Six Week Tour.

In the summer of 1816, Shelley and Mary, living now as a married couple, made a second trip to Switzerland. They were prompted to do so by Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, who had commenced a liaison with Shelly's fellow romantic poet Lord Byron the previous April, just before he entered his self-exile on the continent. Byron had lost interest in Claire, and she used the opportunity of meeting the Shelleys as bait to lure him to Geneva. The Shelleys and Byron rented neighboring houses on the shores of Lake Geneva. It was there that Mary Shelley first came up with the idea for her Gothic novel Frankenstein.

At the end of summer, the Shelleys and Claire returned to England and Percy later helped Mary with Frankenstein, encouraging her to expand the tale, tidying up spelling and syntax and making significant changes in words, themes and style.

Shelley was introduced to fellow romantic poet John Keats in Hampstead towards the end of 1816 by their mutual friend, Leigh Hunt. Shelley's huge admiration of Keats was not entirely reciprocated as Keats had reservations about Shelley's dissolute behaviour.

On December 10, 1816 Shelley's estranged and pregnant wife Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London, which produced great pangs of guilt in Percy.

On December 30, 1816, a few weeks after Harriet's body was recovered, Shelley and Mary Godwin were married. The marriage was intended, in part, to help secure Shelley's custody of his children by Harriet, but it was in vain: the children were handed over to foster parents by the courts.

Mary bore Percy a son, William and a daughter, Clara. Both died in Italy, Clara of dysentery in Venice in 1818 and William in Rome of malaria the following year.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Percy Shelley was long haired, shortsighted, tall and stooping. At the age of 18 he looked like a mad scientist with his wild hair, nocturnal habits and burnt and stained clothing (see below).

Shelley was shy, anarchic, cruel and careless. He was renowned for his mischievous sense of humor.

Thomas Carlyle wrote in his Reminiscences: "Poor Shelley always was and is a kind of ghostly object, colourless, palid, tuneless, without health or warmth of vigour, the sound of him shrieky, frosty, as if a ghost were trying to "sing" to us. The temperament of him, spasmodic, hysterical."

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Percy and Mary shared a love of languages and literature, and they enjoyed reading and discussing books together, such as the classics that Percy took to reading after they returned to London towards the end of 1814.

Shelley liked to sail paper boats at Hampstead Ponds to amuse children. Legend has it that he used £5 notes.

HEALTH AND DEATH 

Shelley was a hypochondriac who exaggerated his illnesses. Once he was convinced he had tuberculosis, but as his overall physical condition improved his illness disappeared.

Shelley loved the sea and yachting but never learnt to swim. On July 8, 1822 he drowned whilst sailing in a sudden storm as he traveled back from Pisa and Livorno to Lerici in his schooner, the Don Juan. For a long time before, he had been haunted by visions of his own death by drowning.

Shelley was one of three important English Romantic poets of the same generation who died young; the other two were Lord Byron and John Keats.

The Don Juan, an open boat designed from a Royal dockyards model, was custom-built in Genoa for Shelley. It did not capsize but sank; Mary Shelley declared in her Note on Poems of 1822 (1839) that this design had a defect and was never seaworthy.

When the dead Shelley's body was washed up on the beach two books were found in his pockets, a slim edition of The Works of Sophocles and a volume of Keats' poems still clutched in his hand.

Shelley was cremated soon afterwards on the beach near Viareggio with his anguished friends including Lord Byron in attendance.

The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Édouard Fournier (1889). 

His heart was snatched, unconsumed, from the funeral pyre by Edward Trelawny, and kept by Mary Shelley until her dying day,

Shelley's ashes were burnt in a protestant cemetery at Rome next to Keats. Fragments of his ashes were exhibited at 1992 bicentenary exhibition at the British Library.