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Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) had a short, messy, and remarkably productive life. Though born into a wealthy Sussex family that eventually attained the rank of minor nobility, Shelley grew up to be a radical nonconformist who refused to behave like a noble. After his primary education at Eton, he entered Oxford in 1810, only to be expelled after six months for coauthoring and distributing a pamphlet arguing in favor of atheism. Thus began a long period of restless movement and romantic imbroglios. He went off to London, where he met a woman named Harriet Westbrook, with whom he soon eloped to Edinburgh. He later returned to London and became the disciple of a philosopher named William Godwin. When he fell in love with Godwin’s daughter, Mary, he left London once again, abandoning Harriet and eloping to France, where he would eventually wed Mary after numerous complications and tragedies—including Harriet’s suicide. Despite the suspect morality he exhibited in his personal life, Shelley was dedicated to fighting all forms of injustice and oppression. Above all, he championed the power of the imagination as essential to the flourishing of a free society. He outlined the precepts of this belief in his great unfinished essay, “A Defence of Poetry,” (published posthumously in 1840).

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