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Percy Bysshe Shelley

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From: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Date: 20070301
Author:

(born Aug. 4, 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, Eng.—died July 8, 1822, at sea off Livorno, Tuscany) English Romantic poet. The heir to rich estates, Shelley was a rebellious youth who was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for refusing to admit authorship of The Necessity of Atheism . Later that year he eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner. He gradually channeled his passionate pursuit of personal love and social justice into poetry. His first major poem, Queen Mab (1813), is a utopian political epic revealing his progressive social ideals. In 1814 he eloped to ...

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