Percy Bysshe Shelley | Books by Percy Bysshe Shelley | About Percy Bysshe Shelley | Book Reviews & Recommendations

About This Author

Born in Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex, Shelley was educated at Syon House Academy and Eton, where he acquired the sobriquet "Mad Shelley" for his independent spirit. While at Eton he published Zastrozzi (1810), a Gothic novel. Expelled from Oxford because he refused to retract his atheistic beliefs, Shelley quarreled with his wealthy father and was banished from home. Shelley married impulsively and then abandoned his young wife to run off to Italy with the 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the daughter of the radical feminist and the anarchist philosopher, who was eventually to write Frankenstein). While in Italy, Shelley became close friends with Byron, and the two became objects of endless, notorious rumor. Shelley's personal character was revered by almost everyone who knew him. Extremely generous toward others, frugal with himself, he strove tirelessly for the betterment of humanity. Prometheus Unbound (1820), a lyrical drama in four acts, calls for the regeneration of society through love and for the destruction of all repressive institutions. The Cenci (1819), a verse drama based on real events, is one of the few plays from the romantic period still produced. Shelley's lyrics are marvelously varied and rich in sound and rhythm. Wordsworth regarded him as the best artist among living poets.Adonais (1821), written to honor the memory of John Keats, is one of the supreme elegies in English.The Triumph of Life, which was left incomplete at his death, has been hailed by T. S. Eliot as the nearest approach in English to Dante (see Vol. 2). The "Ode to the West Wind" and "To a Skylark" are anthologized everywhere. Shelley's early death by drowning ended his career just as it was coming into full flower. A revolutionary in his art and life, Shelley is considered by many to be an inspired polemicist and poetic genius. As one of his contemporaries wrote in Etonian (1821), "He is one of the many whom we cannot read without wonder, or without pain. . . ."

Show less

Books by thisAuthor

(90)

The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
(A Modern Library E-Book)
Percy Bysshe Shelley endures today as the great Promethean bard of the High Romantic period who is best remembered for extolling the sublime and affirming the possibility of transcendence. From the Hardcover edition.
Visit Book Page
Prometheus Unbound
A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts
One of the most ambitious dramatic poems ever written, Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound tells the story of the Titan Prometheus who gave mankind the secret of fire in open defiance to the decrees of Zeus, and who, as punishment for this generosity, was chained to the Caucasus Mountains and exposed to horrible tortures. Inspired by the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, Shelley's play serves as a sort of sequel, matching its Greek predecessor in stature and pure poetic power. It depicts its philanthropist hero's ultimate triumph over the superstition and bigotry of the gods. As Shelley himself stated in his Defence of Poetry, Prometheus Unbound awakens and enlarges the mind.
Visit Book Page
Zastrozzi
Zastrozzi, Shelley’s first published novel, is a work of pure Gothic fantasy, offering many glimpses of the author’s nascent poetic genius. Zastrozzi, the arch-villain of the tale, is sworn to avenge the wrongs done to his mother. Prepared to go to any lengths to execute his horrific plans, he enlists the help of the willing Matilda. Together, they vow to destroy Verezzi and Julia, the subjects of their wrath, and embark upon a fateful chain of events that can lead only to catastrophe.
Visit Book Page
A Defence of Poetry
This title is from the Hayes Barton Press "Originals" series, a collection of classic fiction and nonfiction works from world literature.
Visit Book Page
The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Writing to his publisher in 1813, Shelley expressed the hope that two of his major works "should form one volume"; nearly two centuries later, the second volume of the Johns Hopkins edition of The Complete Poetry fulfills that wish for the first time. This volume collects two important pieces: Queen Mab and The Esdaile Notebook. Privately issued in 1813, Queen Mab was perhaps Shelley's most intellectually ambitious work, articulating his views of science, politics, history, religion, society, and individual human relations. Subtitled A Philosophical Poem: With Notes, it became his most influential—and pirated—poem during much of the nineteenth century, a favorite among reformers and radicals. The Esdaile Notebook, a cycle of fifty-eight early poems, exhibits an astonishing range of verse forms. Unpublished until 1964, this sequence is vital in understanding how the poet mastered his craft. As in the acclaimed first volume, these works have been critically edited by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. The poems are presented as Shelley intended, with textual variants included in footnotes. Following the poems are extensive discussions of the circumstances of their composition and the influences they reflect; their publication or circulation by other means; their reception at the time of publication and in the decades since; their re-publication, both authorized and unauthorized; and their place in Shelley's intellectual and aesthetic development.
Visit Book Page
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Visit Book Page
The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays
The great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), best known for such masterpieces as "Ode to the West Wind" and "Prometheus Unbound," also expressed his ideas on religious oppression in works of impassioned prose. The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays features five anti-religious tracts by Shelley: "On Christianity," "The Necessity of Atheism" (which resulted in the youthful Shelley's expulsion from Oxford in 1811), "On Life," "On a Future State," and "A Refutation of Deism." Like his great poems, these extol the spirit of man and argue that Christianity, with its repressive belief system, is wholly out of keeping with human ideals and aspirations. A philosopher as well as a poet, Shelley argues that the divine attributes of God are merely projections of human powers; life everlasting cannot be empirically demonstrated, for it runs counter to all the evidence for mortality given by the natural world, which is the only world we know. During his brief life, Shelley affronted the armies of Christendom with a single-minded purpose. As Shelley observes in his dialogue "A Refutation of Deism," there can be no middle ground between accepting revealed religion and disbelieving in the existence of a diety - another way of stating the necessity of atheism. In all, these essays provide an important statement of the poet and freethinker's enlightened views on skepticism, faith, and the corruption of organized Christianity
Visit Book Page
Shelley's Poetry and Prose
Each selection has been thoroughly reedited, and the order of the poems has been rearranged in light of redating or other reconsiderations. All headnotes are new or updated, and many footnotes have been added, replaced, or revised. "Criticism" reflects the recent renaissance in Shelley studies, the greatest renaissance since 1870-92. All twenty-three essays are new to the Second Edition; among them are the work of Harold Bloom, Stuart Curran, Annette Wheeler Cafarelli, Michael Ferber, James Chandler, and Susan J. Wolfson. A Chronology, an updated Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are included.
Visit Book Page
Written among the Euganean Hills, North Italy
This title is from the Hayes Barton Press "Originals" series, a collection of classic fiction and nonfiction works from world literature.
Visit Book Page
Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley
This title is from the Hayes Barton Press "Originals" series, a collection of classic fiction and nonfiction works from world literature.
Visit Book Page
Shelley: Poems
Visit Book Page
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Idealist, atheist, outcast, political radical and, of course, poet â 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 recognised 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 (among others) Prometheus Unbound and AdonaÃ¯s, all read by Bertie Carvel, one of the most talented English actors of his generation.
Visit Book Page
Shelley: Selected Poetry
SHELLEY'S WORK HAS BEEN CRITICIZED FOR ITS DIDACTICISM AND UNDISCIPLINED EMOTIONALISM. BUT ESSENTIALLY HE WAS A POET OF IDEAS AND IN HIS SEARCH FOR TRUTH AND ORIGINAL HUMAN PERFECTION, SHELLEY WAS INSPIRED AS MUCH BY THE GREEK POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS, PARTICULARLY PLATO, AS BY THE RADICALISM OF HIS OWN AGE. ABOVE ALL, HIS GREAT GIFT WAS HIS LYRICISM AND HIS VERSE COMES AS NEAR TO MUSIC AS POETRY CAN.
Visit Book Page
Paradise of Golden Lights
Selected Poems
A selection of the odes, hymns and pans of England's breathless, angelic, anarchic poet. Famous poems, such as 'Ode to the West Wind' and The Cloud', are set beside extracts from Prometheus Unbound and Epipsychidion.
Visit Book Page
Shelley's Adonais
A Critical Edition
Is China moving toward a liberal democracy? How does Western engagement with China contribute to this enormous cultural shift? While still one of the most memorable and inflammatory moments in late 20th-century political history, the 1989 protest in Tiananmen Square seems to have accomplished little toward promoting political reform in contemporary China. However, the past decade has witnessed a tremendous shift in the way Chinese society and the Chinese economy are organized, and few would dispute that the country is experiencing a dramatic transition. Yijiang Ding assesses this extraordinary change in terms of changes in the formal conception of "democracy," and illustrates how this central reconstruction has drastically altered the former unity of state and society under the Leninist model. Drawing on new Chinese scholarship and political theory, Ding presents a sweeping and multidimensional picture of modern China at the political crossroads.
Visit Book Page
The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Volume I of this critical edition of Shelley's prose--the first since the Julian Edition (1926-30)--provides authoritative texts ofThe Necessity of Atheism, the Irish pamphlets, the vegetarian essays,The Assassins,A Refutation of Deism,On Christianity, the "Hermit of Marlow" political writings, and several reviews. The texts, which are based on first editions and manuscripts, were all written between Shelley's last months in Oxford in 1811 and his departure for Italy in 1818. They are conservatively edited, with all changes from copy-text noted, along with revisions, deletions, and a historical collation of significant earlier editions. The Introduction provides a description of these editions, a full statement of editorial principles and practice, and an account of the relevant political and social context as Shelley knew and wrote about it. The commentary pays particular attention to the problems of dating the manuscripts, and contains more detailed copy-text descriptions, more thorough accounts of provenance, and more information on sources and allusions than any previous edition of the works. Location lists of rare first editions are comparably more complete than those provided in earlier bibliographies.
Visit Book Page
Ode to the West Wind and Other Poems
Treasury of 37 well-known and representative poems by great Romantic poet includes "Ode to the West Wind," "To a Skylark," "Adonais," "Ozymandias," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," many more. Lists of titles and first lines.
Visit Book Page
Prometheus Unbound - A Lyrical Drama
The Prometheus Unbound is a four-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelley originally published in 1820. This work is inspired by Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound" and concerns the final release from captivity of Prometheus. However there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Zeus in Shelley's narrative. Instead, Jupiter is overthrown, which allows Prometheus to be released...
Visit Book Page
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Includes Adonais, Daemon of the World, Peter...
This collection was designed for optimal navigation on Sony Reader and other electronic devices. It is indexed alphabetically, chronologically and by category, making it easier to access individual books. This collection offers lower price, the convenience of a one-time download, and it reduces the clutter in your digital library. All books included in this collection feature a hyperlinked table of contents and footnotes. The collection is complimented by an author biography. Table of Contents: Adonais The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2 The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 3 A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays Percy Bysshe Shelley Biography About and Navigation
Visit Book Page
Prometheus Unbound - Percy Bysshe Shelly
The Prometheus Unbound is a four-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelley originally published in 1820. This work is inspired by Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound" and concerns the final release from captivity of Prometheus. However there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Zeus in Shelley's narrative. Instead, Jupiter is overthrown, which allows Prometheus to be released...
Visit Book Page

SHOW ALL BOOKS