FAMOUS ENGLISH POETS
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Monograph Number Three in The Mentor Reading Course
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born near Horsham, in the county of Sussex, England, on August 4, 1792. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley.
At the age of eleven he was sent to school at Eton. There he had a hard time. He resisted the “fagging” system,—a system under which the young boys must act as servants to the older ones,—and he would not work at his lessons. He was gentle natured and retiring; but when provoked he showed a very violent temper. So he was known as “Mad Shelley” by his schoolmates.
In 1810 Shelley entered Oxford. But he did not stay there long; for he and a friend, named Thomas Jefferson Hogg, became atheists, and Shelley wrote a little pamphlet on atheism, which he sent to the different heads of the colleges, asking them to notify him at once of their conversion to atheism. This they declined to do; but instead summoned both Shelley and Hogg and expelled them. Shelley and his friends complained at what they termed the injustice of the expulsion; but his father would have nothing to do with him. So Shelley went to London, where he wrote the poem “Queen Mab.” This was not published until later.
When he was in London his sisters sent him money by means of Harriet Westbrook, one of their friends. Shelley converted her to atheism, and married her in August, 1811, because she did not wish to go back to school. This marriage turned out to be very unhappy, and they separated by mutual consent in 1813.