Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4, 1792, in Sussex. The son of a landowner, he studied at Eton and Oxford. A revolutionary and restless spirit, he published the pamphlet "The Necessity of Atheism" in 1811, which led to his expulsion from the university, his disinheritance by his father, and his reputation as a radical. Later that year, he married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he had two children. The marriage was not a happy one. In 1812, he released "An Address to the Irish People" in response to the Irish Religious Freedom Movement. In London, he met the writer William Godwin, who influenced his early socially-themed poems, such as "Queen Mab" and "The Revolt of Islam" (1813). In 1814, after separating from Harriet, he left London with Mary Godwin—later known for "Frankenstein"—and after his wife's suicide, he married her in 1816. The tragic death of his first wife and the ensuing social scandal forced him to leave England in March 1818. He spent the last four years of his life mainly in Italy, with his friends Byron and Leigh Hunt, where he wrote his finest works. Here, shortly before his thirtieth birthday, he drowned in the Gulf of Spezia when his small boat, Ariel, capsized during a storm in July 1822. His body was found two months later, and while awaiting the arrival of Byron and Hunt, he was buried in the sand, to be later cremated in the presence of his friends. His ashes and heart were eventually buried in Rome, next to John Keats.