Shelley: Poetry Lifts the Veil

It’s the birthday of the man who said, “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” That’s the poet and essayist Percy Bysshe Shelley, born in Field Place, Sussex, England (1792). He grew up in a wealthy family and went off to Oxford, where he was kicked out for writing risqué poetry and declaring his atheism in a pamphlet he published. The family cut him off financially at the age of 19.

Shelley left England and eloped to Scotland with his 16-year-old bride. There he was mentored by the English philosopher William Godwin. Chronically broke, Godwin saw in Shelley’s wealthy family his salvation and encouraged the poet to make good with his father. While Godwin’s outspoken socialism appealed to Shelley, so did his intellectual daughter, Mary, and soon the two had left both their families to roam around Europe together.

Shelley and Mary traveled to Switzerland, where they rented an adjoining house to Lord Byron. The two writers were good for one another, and in 1816, Shelley published his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. That same year, Percy’s previous wife committed suicide, and Percy and Mary married in a failed attempt to gain custody of Percy’s orphaned children. The court refused, citing the poet’s belief in “free love” as the reason, and the children went into foster care.

The next few years were the most productive of Shelley’s life. He wrote “Adonis,” an elegy for his friend John Keats; “Prometheus Unbound,” a drama in verse; and The Cenci, a tragedy. He is also credited with making major contributions to Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818).

He died before the age of 30, attempting to sail the coast of Spain in his ship, the Don Juan.

Shelly said, ”Do it now — write nothing but what your conviction of its truth inspires you to write.”

-Writer's Almanac