Selected Poems Of Percy Bysshe Shelley - The World's Classics CLXXXXVII
By
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Published by Oxford University Press Humphrey Milford c1920 (undated)
"Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the central figures of the English Romantic movement, celebrated for his radical ideas, lyrical mastery, and unflinching challenge to social, political, and religious conventions. Born into an aristocratic family, he rejected traditional paths, embracing revolutionary ideals influenced by writers like William Godwin. His early works, including Queen Mab (1813), expressed his atheism, pacifism, and belief in social reform, which scandalized polite society but gained him a reputation as a visionary thinker. Shelley's life was marked by turbulence—estrangement from his family, expulsion from Oxford, and a controversial personal life, including his marriage to the novelist Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
Despite a short life, Shelley produced some of the most enduring poetry in English literature, blending passionate emotion with philosophical depth. Works such as Prometheus Unbound (1820), Adonais (1821), and poems like Ozymandias and To a Skylark showcase his lyrical brilliance and profound concern with human freedom, justice, and the fleeting nature of power. His idealism, belief in the transformative power of love and imagination, and his unrelenting defiance of tyranny cemented his legacy as a poet of rebellion and hope. Shelley drowned tragically at the age of 29 in Italy, but his influence spread widely, inspiring later generations of writers, reformers, and revolutionaries who saw in his verse both beauty and a call to liberation."
