Historical figure · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE revision on Incandio

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who Left The King Half-Buried In Sand · Poet · 1792–1822

The radical Romantic poet expelled from Oxford for atheism, who wrote Ozymandias as a warning to tyrants, The Mask of Anarchy after Peterloo and Love's Philosophy as an argument from nature, and drowned in Italy at twenty-nine.

Defend these ideas against Shelley

Incandio is a free revision platform for the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, and on it a topic counts as mastered only once you have learned it, proved it in questions, taught it back and defended it against the person with the strongest claim on it. Percy Bysshe Shelley is that person for 3 topics on the course:

• Ozymandias in Ozymandias — English Literature
• Love's Philosophy in Love's Philosophy — English Literature
• England in 1819 in England in 1819 — English Literature

Who was Shelley?

Born in 1792 at Field Place in Sussex, heir to a baronetcy, Shelley was bullied at Eton and expelled from Oxford in 1811 for a pamphlet arguing for atheism. He eloped that year with sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook, and in 1814 left her for Mary Godwin, daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin and the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Harriet drowned herself in December 1816; Shelley married Mary weeks later and the courts took Harriet's children from him because of his beliefs. In the winter of 1817 he wrote Ozymandias in a sonnet contest with his friend Horace Smith, and it was published in January 1818. That spring the Shelleys left for Italy, where two of their children died. After the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 he wrote The Mask of Anarchy, a call for mass non-violent resistance that his editor did not dare print until 1832. He wrote Prometheus Unbound, Ode to the West Wind, A Defence of Poetry and Adonais. He drowned when his boat went down in a storm in the Gulf of Spezia on 8 July 1822.

Major achievements

• Wrote Ozymandias (1818), one of the best-known sonnets in English
• Wrote The Mask of Anarchy (1819), an early statement of mass non-violent resistance
• Wrote Prometheus Unbound, Ode to the West Wind and the elegy Adonais for Keats
• Argued in A Defence of Poetry that poetry shapes the moral imagination of a society
• Published radical prose on atheism, vegetarianism and parliamentary reform

Life in brief

• 1792 — Born at Field Place, Sussex: Eldest son of Timothy Shelley, heir to a baronetcy.
• 1811 — Expelled from Oxford: For The Necessity of Atheism; elopes with Harriet Westbrook.
• 1814 — Leaves with Mary Godwin: Travels to the Continent; Harriet is pregnant with their second child.
• 1816 — Harriet's death: She drowns in the Serpentine; Shelley marries Mary on 30 December.
• 1818 — Ozymandias published: In The Examiner, 11 January; the Shelleys leave for Italy in March.
• 1819 — Peterloo: Writes The Mask of Anarchy; Love's Philosophy appears in The Indicator.
• 1822 — Drowns off Italy: His boat sinks in a storm in the Gulf of Spezia on 8 July.

Explore the life of Shelley — five chapters

1. The Necessity of Atheism — A baronet's heir who chose to be thrown out
2. Two Households — Mary Godwin, Harriet, and the Lord Chancellor
3. Ozymandias — A sonnet contest and a king in the sand
4. Ye Are Many — Peterloo and a poem nobody dared print
5. Love's Philosophy and the Last Voyage — An argument from nature, a defence of poetry, and the Gulf of Spezia

Read the five-chapter life of Percy Bysshe Shelley →

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