Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic poet whose passionate search for personal love and social justice was gradually channeled from overt actions into poems that rank with the greatest in the English language. Shelley was the heir to rich estates acquired by his grandfather, Bysshe (pronounced
Two hundred years ago, on July 8, 1822, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned. He was less than a month short of thirty. Friedrich Engels’s enthusiasm for Shelley lasted a lifetime.