[T]here is thus another man gone about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken.
     --Lord Byron (on Shelley's death)

As we learned in our earlier studies, Lord Byron remained one of the most popular writers of his time--despite his scandalous lifestyle and his exile from England. Percy Bysshe Shelley was similarly exiled, but at the end of his life he was scarcely read at all.

Yet, as Richard Holmes observes in Shelley: The Pursuit (Dutton, 1974),

Of all the English Romantic writers, Shelley was the most determinedly professional writer. Many years after his death, Wordsworth called him 'one of the best artists of us all; I mean in workmanship of style'. By the end of his life Shelley had mastered and translated from Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, and Greek, and had rendered several fragments from the Arabic. From the very start he was a writer who interested himself in political and philosophic ideas, rather than purely aesthetic ones. (ix)

From the outset, Shelley was persistent in "his denial of a creative and superintending deity (along with a rejection of institutional Christianity and the doctrine of original sin) and his persuasion that human life is perfectible" (Earl R. Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading, Johns Hopkins, 1971, 3).

As you read about Shelley in the introduction to our selections (698-701), you will find a more complete discussion of the ideas mentioned above. Before turning to the poems, you should also review the general comments on Neoplatonism. Follow the links below in the course of your study:

• Notes on Neoplatonism
• Notes on "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

^© Scott Foll 2000. All rights reserved.