Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792 - 1822
English Romantic poet and essayist
Percy Bysshe Shelley was the son of a wealthy Member of Parliament. He went to University College, Oxford in 1810, but was suspected of writing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism and was expelled.
In 1811 he met and eloped with Harriet Westbrook. By 1814, their marriage had collapsed and Shelley eloped again, this time with Mary Godwin, who was later to write Frankenstein.
In 1816 Shelley spent the summer on Lake Geneva with Byron and Mary, who had begun work on her Frankenstein. In the autumn of that year Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
Shelley himself was drowned in a storm at sea in 1822.
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.Percy Bysshe Shelley