Shelley is one of the most revered figures in the English poetical landscape. Born on the 4th August 1792 he has, over the years, become rightly regarded as a major Romantic poet. Yet during his own lifetime little of his work was published. Publishers feared his radical views and possible charges against themselves for blasphemy and sedition. On 8th July 1822 a month before his 30th birthday, during a sudden storm, his tragic early death by drowning robbed our culture of many fine expected masterpieces. But in his short spell on earth he weaved much magic. Queen Mab was Shelley's first major...

Shelley is one of the most revered figures in the English poetical landscape. Born on the 4th August 1792 he has, over the years, become rightly regarded as a major Romantic poet. Yet during his own lifetime little of his work was published. Publishers feared his radical views and possible charges against themselves for blasphemy and sedition. On 8th July 1822 a month before his 30th birthday, during a sudden storm, his tragic early death by drowning robbed our culture of many fine expected masterpieces. But in his short spell on earth he weaved much magic. The Revolt of Islam: A Poem in 12...

Adonais is the first writing by Shelley which has been included in the Clarendon Press Series. It is a poem of convenient length for such a purpose, being neither short nor decidedly long; and-leaving out of count some of the short poems-is the one by this author which approaches nearest to being 'popular.' It is elevated in sentiment, classical in form, -in substance, biographical in relation to Keats, and in some minor degree autobiographical for Shelley himself. On these grounds it claimed a reasonable preference over all his other poems, for the present method of treatment; although some...

With like many great works of art, 'Frankenstein' was initially misunderstood. The first reviews were decidedly mixed. An anonymous review in The Literary Panorama and National Register published June 1 1818 dismissed Shelley's work as 'a feeble imitation of one that was very popular in its day.' Other periodicals were kinder. Writing in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine on 20 March 1818, Walter Scott praised the unusual Gothic Romance as a "tale, though wild in incident, is written in plain and forcible English, without exhibiting that mixture of hyperbolical Germanisms with which tales of...

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: PARADISE OF GOLDEN LIGHTS: SELECTED POEMS

A selection of the odes, hymns and paeans of England's breathless, angelic, anarchic poet. Famous poems, such as 'Ode to the West Wind' and 'The Cloud', are set beside extracts from Prometheus Unbound and Epipsychidion. New poems and new illustrations have been added to this edition.

Percy Shelley is one of the 'major' British poets, seen by many people as the breathless, hyperlyrical, angelic yet anarchic poet of the Romantic era, out-doing Lord Byron and John Keats in terms of sheer brilliance. His personality, as...