Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Sussex to a wealthy, aristocratic family. He went to Eton and Oxford, he wrote poetry and he experimented with alchemy. He was sent down from Oxford when he was eighteen after he had published a pamphlet entitled "The Necessity of Atheism". All copies but one were burned and the incident led to a break with his family. Shelley was radical and oppositional; he accepted no power over individual freedom exercised by Sovereign, Church or Family. He described himself as a committed republican and sceptic.