payment page
Study Tools
Overview
“Ozymandias” is a sonnet by the British Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley
. Written in 1817, Shelley first published the poem in an 1818 issue of The Examiner under the pen name “Glirastes.” The poem arose from a competition between Shelley and his friend, Horace Smith. Both men agreed to compose a poem with the same title and on the same subject: namely, the statue of an ancient Egyptian king, Rameses II, whose Greek name is Ozymandias. Shelley’s sonnet was the competition’s clear winner, and it remains one of his best-known and widely anthologized poems.Read a summary & analysis, an analysis of the speaker, and explanations of important quotes from “Ozymandias.”
