Percy Bysshe Shelley. Renaissance Man: Verse from One Man to Mankind

Written by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Narrated by Richard Mitchley, David Shaw Parker and Ghizela Rowe

Percy Bysshe Shelley was able to distill big themes into brilliant poems.

In this collection ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ captures the appalling terror of British troops killing and injuring their own people as they peacefully protest for the reform of Parliamentary representation at Peterloo in Manchester on 16th August, 1819.

‘Adonais’ majestically captures his admiration and the deep tragic loss he felt for his friend and fellow Romantic poet John Keats.

In ‘Ode To Liberty’ Shelley makes a bold plea for the support of revolutionary causes and for the expression of individual freedom.

In these three pieces Shelley confirms that he did not limit himself in being part of the Romantic movement and was able to actively comment with conviction and passion on the social and political issues of his day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839675072

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet. Born into a prominent political family, Shelley enjoyed a quiet and happy childhood in West Sussex, developing a passion for nature and literature at a young age. He struggled in school, however, and was known by his colleagues at Eton College and University College, Oxford as an outsider and eccentric who spent more time acquainting himself with radical politics and the occult than with the requirements of academia. During his time at Oxford, he began his literary career in earnest, publishing Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810) and St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (1811) In 1811, he married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he lived an itinerant lifestyle while pursuing affairs with other women. Through the poet Robert Southey, he fell under the influence of political philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary soon fell in love with the precocious young poet. In the summer of 1814, Shelley eloped to France with Mary and her stepsister Claire Claremont, travelling to Holland, Germany, and Switzerland before returning to England in the fall. Desperately broke, Shelley struggled to provide for Mary through several pregnancies while balancing his financial obligations to Godwin, Harriet, and his own father. In 1816, Percy and Mary accepted an invitation to join Claremont and Lord Byron in Europe, spending a summer in Switzerland at a house on Lake Geneva. In 1818, following several years of unhappy life in England, the Shelleys—now married—moved to Italy, where Percy worked on The Masque of Anarchy (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821), now considered some of his most important works. In July of 1822, Shelley set sail on the Don Juan and was lost in a storm only hours later. His death at the age of 29 was met with despair and contempt throughout England and Europe, and he is now considered a leading poet and radical thinker of the Romantic era.