Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot the Tyrant - A Tragedy in Two Acts

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

This vintage text contains Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1892 book, "Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot the Tyrant - A Tragedy in Two Acts". It is a satire in verse, aimed at George IV and Queen Caroline, and will greatly appeal to collectors of Shelley's seminal work - as well as those interested in antiquarian literature of this ilk. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was one of the most influential English Romantic poets, and is considered by many critics as one of the finest poets in the English language. He was an important member of a small group of visionary poets and men of letters that comprised Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. This vintage book is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition, complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473393080

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.

Book preview

ŒDIPUS TYRANNUS;

OR,

SWELLFOOT the TYRANT.

A Tragedy.

IN TWO ACTS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC.

——— Choose Reform or civil-war,

When thro’ thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,

A CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a KING with hogs,

Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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British Library

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Horsham, Sussex, England in 1792. He studied at University College, Oxford, but his atheistic views got him expelled. Estranged from his father, he left home and began to take trips to London to spend time with famous journalist William Godwin. It was here, around the time that he published Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813), that Shelley met the Godwin’s daughter, Mary, quickly striking up a romantic relationship with her. In 1814, the two of them eloped to Switzerland, where they spent time with Lord Byron, and where the young Mary Shelley found the inspiration for her future masterpiece, Frankenstein (1818).

In 1815, the Shelleys moved back to London, where the two of them continued to write. Percy was a prolific producer of literature, and many of the verse works he penned in the last seven or eight years of his life — such as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy — are now considered some of the best in the English language. He was also known for his uncompromising idealism, most notably as a fierce advocate of non-violence and vegetarianism. Shelley spent the latter part of life in Italy, where he drowned during a sailing trip in 1822, aged just 29. It wasn’t until after his passing that he developed a large following, and since his death writers as varied as George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Karl Marx have all expressed their admiration for him.

[Mrs. Shelley records that Œdipus Tyrannus was begun in August 1820, at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa; Shelley in reading his Ode to Liberty, was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair in the square underneath the windows of his residence there; and the struggle of George IV. to get rid of the claims of Queen Caroline being the current topic of conversation, that domestic episode seems to have combined in his mind with the porcine chorus, and to have borne fruit in this extraordinary piece