The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Percy Bysshe Shelley began life in Horsham, Sussex, England as the oldest child out of seven children. Shelley faced much hardship throughout his life for his controversial views and philosophies. Percy's life however got better after he married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, his second wife, as they were intellectually equal and both wrote. Percy was born August 4th, 1792 in a small village of Broadbridge Heath, there he learned to fish and hunt in the meadows with his good friend and Cousin Thomas Medwin. He was the oldest of seven children of which belonged to Thomas Shelley and Elizabeth Pilfold. At the age of just ten Percy left Broadbridge Heath to go to Syon House Academy then two years later he attended Eton College. He eventually started having issues with Eton College. He was being severely bullied mentally and physically by his classmates. After a while his escape from the pain was his imagination. After a year he had already published two stories and two books of poetry. Starting of fall in 1810 Percy went to University College, Oxford. While he was there he was caught with a pamphlet he wrote which contained views of atheism and was expelled for it. Not only was Percy atheistic, he was also a vegetarian, and had strong beliefs of political radicalism and sexual freedom. His parents weren’t on agreeable terms with his views and demanded him to change it. August of 1811, he became interested in a 16 year old named Harriet Westbrook who his parents told him he could not see. He rebelled because his love was centered on only the hope he had to keep her from committing suicide. They dated for a while, but then Percy grew annoyed with her. Now, his interest was on a schoolteacher who inspired his first major poem called Que... ... middle of paper ... ... from Livorno after seeing Leigh Hunt about their freshly printed journal. Percy’s death was reported an accident but based on the scene some say he had been murdered by a person who didn’t like his political beliefs. As a result, Percy was cremated on the beach where he had drowned. Mary couldn’t go to his funeral because at the time women couldn’t do so. Later his ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery. A few years more than a century had passed when he was honored in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Percy's life was full of hardships and adventure. He showed promise intelligently as a writer and philosopher from a very young age, although his views were not popular. Even so, his stories and poems were well liked in his time, and even now. His family affairs, however, were always quite awkward and only evened out a few years before his mysterious death.

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