Percy Shelley Research Paper

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4, 1792 in Horsham, England. He is the first of seven children of Sir Timothy Shelley and his wife Elizabeth Pilfold Shelley. When Percy was 12 he enrolled at Eton College which was a boys' boarding school. He was bullied by his classmates for his eccentric ways and dainty appearance. When Shelley turned 18 he enrolled at Oxford University. He was uninterested toward his studies and barely attended class. Percy instead spent his time writing a novel called Zastrozzi, in which he vented his early atheistic worldview.
A year later, Shelley published a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism. It gained the attention of the university administration and he was called to appear before the College's Dean. Percy Shelley refused to take authorship of the pamphlet and it resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on 25 March 1811. Shelley was given the choice to be returned after his father intervened, on the condition that he would have to recant his avowed views. His refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.

Four months after being expelled, on August 28, 1811, the 19-year-old Shelley eloped to Scotland with the 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook. Percy and Harriet Shelley have a daughter
named Elizabeth Lanthe who is born on June 23, 1813. Shelley was increasingly unhappy in his marriage to Harriet. He began spending more time away from home, he studied Italian with Cornelia Turner and visited the home of William Godwin.

Shelley's mentor, William Godwin, had three daughters: Fanny Imlay, Claire Clairmont, and Mary Godwin.
Shelley fell madly in love with Mary. In 1814, Shelley abandoned Harriet, who was now pregnant with their son Charles, and ran away to Switzerland with Mary. They invited her stepsister Claire Clairmont along because she could speak French. They left the older sister Fanny behind, which was unfortunate because she had fallen in love with Shelley as well. The three sailed to Europe and toured the continent. After six weeks they returned to England. When they return Mary was now pregnant. Percy and Mary were forced to live apart while Shelley went into hiding to escape his creditors. During his time in hiding he wrote the poem
Alastor.

On November 30, 1814, Harriet gave birth to Percy’s second child Charles. A little over a year later on January 24, 1816, Mary gave birth to the couple's second child named William. Later that year in May, the Shelleys took a holiday in Switzerland with Claire Clairmont. Claire was pregnant with the child of Lord Byron. Byron and Shelley became close friends. During this summer trip the novel Frankenstein had begun. It was published anonymously at first but was later given authorship to Mary. In October of 1816, Fanny Godwin committed suicide with an overdose of Laudanum. The next month Shelley’s wife Harriet committed suicide as well. She threw herself into London’s Serpentine River while pregnant with the couple’s third child. When Percy tried to get custody of their children the courts refused because of his unorthodox views.

On December 30, 1816, Shelley and Mary Godwin got married in London. Mary was pregnant at the time and five months later she gave birth to their third child, a daughter named Clara Everina. On New Years Days of 1818, the novel Frankenstein was published and had immediate success. The Shelleys traveled to Italy in order to convince Lord Byron to give his lover Claire access to their child. They remained in Italy for several years. On September 24, 1818, Percy and Mary’s daughter Clara Everina died in Italy. Then on June 7, 1819, the Shelleys' three-year-old son William died of malaria in Italy. The Shelleys now had no living children, though Mary was pregnant with their fourth. The Shelleys moved to Florence. Mary Shelley gave birth to the couple's son Percy Florence, (who was the only one of their children to outlive his parents). Percy Shelley wrote the poems The Masque of Anarchy and Men of England. In 1820, Shelley published the play Prometheus Unbound, an imaginative drama depicting the torture of the mythological figure Prometheus by Zeus.

On July 8, 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned and died in the Gulf of Spezia while sailing with a friend. A devastated Mary Shelley had his body cremated. Two years later Mary Shelley began editing a book of her late husband's poems for publication. She was forced to stop when her father-in law threatened to cut off support to her and her son unless she pledged never to publish any of his son's works during his lifetime. In October of 1839, Mary Shelley finally finished editing and published Shelley's collected poems. Timothy Shelley agreed to the publication, so long as it contained no memoirs of his son. The following month she published a collection of Shelley's essays and assorted writing.