Poems and Prose

A short life, and a turbulent one-Shelley died at the age of twenty-nine. The work he left behind is among the most lyrically beautiful and politically committed in the language. Inspired by the Age of Revolutions, Shelley proved too provocative for England. Sent down from Oxford and disillusioned with English life, he spent his last years in self imposed exile in Italy. His writings on vegetarianism, the marriage system, love, Christianity, the devil, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and political reform are represented in this selection, together with complete versions of Address...on the 'Death of the Princess Charlotte' and a 'Defence of Poetry'.