Percy Bysshe Shelley

Summary

Idealist, atheist, outcast, political radical, and poet—Percy Bysshe Shelley was, in many ways, the epitome of the Romantic artist. His poetry was an outlet for his passionately held and highly unpopular beliefs; beliefs which resulted in social exclusion, exile, and possibly even his premature death at the age of twenty-nine. His work is a monument to his convictions and to the power of the human spirit, and today it is recognized as a key contribution to Romantic literature. This anthology contains many of his best-known poems, including “Ozymandias,” “The Mask of Anarchy,” and “To a Skylark,” as well as excerpts from “Prometheus Unbound” and “Adonaïs.”