Definition of Percy Bysshe Shelley from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary


Percy Bysshe Shelley

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(1792-1822) one of the major poets of the English Romantic Movement. He is well known for the beauty of his verse. He was an atheist (= a person who believes that there is no God) and an anarchist (= a person who believes there should be no laws or government), whose love of freedom and left-wing political opinions influenced poems such as Prometheus Unbound (1820). He ran away twice with young women, and lived the last few years of his life with his second wife Mary in Italy, where he died in an accident at sea. His best-known poems include Ode to the West Wind and To a Skylark.