Instructions

Shelley was born into a privileged family, in a village near Sussex in 1792. He lived an idyllic childhood and began an education at Eton. There, he was bullied mentally and physically and this triggered his appreciation of the imagination. He later attended University College, Oxford but was expelled from there for his part in the production of the leaflet entitled ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. In 1811, he eloped with a sixteen year old and continued to live a radical lifestyle; he was a vegetarian, a political radical and believed in sexual freedom. He married Harriet Westbrook and before the birth of their second child, left her for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (author of Frankenstein and daughter of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecroft). He was known for his extensive travelling of Europe, his friendship with the Romantic poet Keats, as well as his writing of poetry and political pamphlets as well as, controversially, his atheism. He drowned in 1822, aged twenty nine.