Poet · 1792 – 1822
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Key Takeaways
- Shelley was one of the greatest lyric poets of English Romanticism.
- His sonnet Ozymandias reflects on the impermanence of power.
- His poetry combined visionary imagination with radical politics.
- He drowned in a sailing accident off Italy at just 29.
Percy Bysshe Shelley burned brightly and briefly. Expelled from Oxford for defending atheism and scorned as a dangerous radical, he is now counted among the greatest lyric poets in the English language.
Visionary and radical
Shelley’s poetry married a soaring imagination to revolutionary politics. Prometheus Unbound reimagined the rebel Titan as a symbol of human liberation, while his Ode to the West Wind called for renewal. His most famous poem, the sonnet Ozymandias, surveys the ruined statue of a forgotten tyrant — a perfect emblem of how all earthly power decays.
A short, luminous life
In Italy he formed a brilliant circle with Lord Byron and his wife Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. When the young John Keats died, Shelley mourned him in the elegy Adonais — and soon after, at just 29, this poet of the modern era drowned in a storm off the Italian coast, leaving a legacy far larger than his years.
Influence
Shelley fused soaring lyricism with revolutionary ideals, inspiring later poets and political movements that drew on his vision of liberty and human possibility.
Legacy
Once dismissed as a dangerous radical, Shelley is now ranked among the finest poets in English, his Ozymandias universally known.
Major Works
- Ozymandias
- Prometheus Unbound
- Ode to the West Wind
Connections
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Percy Bysshe Shelley?
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was an English Romantic poet, author of Ozymandias and Prometheus Unbound, known for his lyric genius and radical politics.
How did Shelley die?
He drowned at the age of 29 when his sailing boat sank in a storm off the coast of Italy in 1822.
Citations & Sources
People Like Percy
Lord Byron
80Lord Byron was an English Romantic poet, one of the most famous and scandalous figures of his age, whose works such as Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage created the brooding "Byronic hero" and made him a celebrity across Europe.
Why A close friend and fellow Romantic poet during their years in Italy.
Mary Shelley
80Mary Shelley was an English writer who, at just eighteen, conceived Frankenstein — a novel often called the first work of science fiction — and went on to a notable literary career while editing the works of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Why His wife, the author of Frankenstein.
John Keats
79John Keats was an English Romantic poet who, despite dying at just 25, produced some of the most beautiful and enduring poetry in the language, including a series of great odes that secured his place among the immortals of English verse.
Why A fellow second-generation Romantic poet whom Shelley mourned in his elegy Adonais.
William Wordsworth
80William Wordsworth was an English poet who, with the Lyrical Ballads, helped launch the Romantic movement in English literature, celebrating nature, memory and ordinary life in language closer to common speech.
Why Also a poet & writer · Active in the same era
Rabindranath Tagore
81Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, composer and polymath who reshaped Indian literature and music and, in 1913, became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Why Also a poet & writer · Active in the same era
Rudyard Kipling
79Rudyard Kipling was a British writer and poet, author of The Jungle Book and the poem "If—", who became the first English-language winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, though his association with British imperialism has made his legacy contested.
Why Also a writer & poet · Active in the same era