Born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Warnham, in Sussex County, the eldest son of conformist Timothy Shelley, a Whig parliamentarian under the protection of the Duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth Pilfold Shelley, he began studying Greek and Latin at Reverend Evan's school Edwards, parish priest of Warnham. At home the sisters Elizabeth and Mary suggest and marvel with tales of terror and magic. He then attended the Syon House Academy in Isleworth and despite being distinguished by a remarkable learning ability, he found the school "a perfect hell" and preferred to spend the days reading gothic novels.
Influenced by Enlightenment ideas, Percy Bysshe Shelley as a poet and intellectual defended liberal thought and rebelled openly to English religious and political institutions. His lyrics, with a bright and impulsive tone, fit perfectly into the vein of romantic poetry, of which it is considered one of the greatest authors, especially English.
Born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Warnham, in Sussex County, the eldest son of conformist Timothy Shelley, a Whig parliamentarian under the protection of the Duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth Pilfold Shelley, he began studying Greek and Latin at Reverend Evan's school Edwards, parish priest of Warnham. At home the sisters Elizabeth and Mary suggest and marvel with tales of terror and magic. He then attended the Syon House Academy in Isleworth and despite being distinguished by a remarkable learning ability, he found the school "a perfect hell" and preferred to spend the days reading gothic novels.
However, the University was essential for a subject of his rank. He studied at Eton and then at Oxford, from where he was expelled for writing and circulating a pamphlet in defense of atheism. In the same year, it was 1811, he married Harriet Westbrook and after the umpteenth conflict with his father he broke all relations with him to move to the Lake District. Harriet will give him two sons, Eliza Ianthe and Charles.
Two years later he published "Regina Mab", a philosophical poem in nine songs that incorporates the socialist thought of William Godwin and whose theme is the Past, the Present, the Future. The meeting with Godwin led him to meet his daughter Mary, with whom he went to live in Switzerland in 1814 and, immediately after the tragic end of his wife Harriet, who died by suicide, two years later the impalma. Mary Shelley will achieve great notoriety as the author of the famous gothic novel "Frankenstein".
Back in England, Percy Shelley writes "Alastor, or the spirit of solitude" (1816), an allegory in verse that anticipates his most important works. In the summer of the same year, again in Switzerland, Shelley and Mary know one of their great contemporaries, the lively and feverish George Byron.
In 1818 he published "The revolt of Islam", a poem with revolutionary tones: shortly after the couple left England, where Shelley would never return. Even his homeland did not want to learn more about him, banned from society because of his radical ideas and his extravagant behavior. In the following four years he lived mainly in Italy, where he became friends with the poet Leigh Hunt and where he continued his acquaintance with his friend Byron.
On July 8, 1822, not yet thirty, Percy Bysshe Shelley died drowned off La Spezia during the stormy return to Lerici from a boat trip. His body together with that of his friend Edward Williams is found in Viareggio. The bodies are burned on the same beach, in the presence of friends Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt. Later, Shelley's tomb will be placed in the city of Rome.