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Shelley’s Memorial Volume
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born 4 August 1792 at Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex, into an aristocratic family. His father, Timothy Shelley, was a Sussex squire and a Member of Parliament. He attended Syon House Academy and Eton, and in 1810 he entered the Oxford University College. He was expelled, however, the following year for publishing his The Necessity of Atheism which he wrote with Thomas Jefferson Hogg.
After he was expelled, Shelley eloped with the 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern owner. The pair spent the following two years travelling in England and Ireland, distributing pamphlets and speaking against political injustice. In 1813 Shelley published his first important poem, the atheistic Queen Mab.
He was on his second marriage to the famous novelist and author of Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, when he drowned in a sailing accident in Italy. He was just 29 years old. The poet's body was washed ashore and was later cremated on the beach in front of his friends who included the other great romantic poet Lord Byron. His heart and ashes were snatched from the funeral pyre by a member of his group, EJ Trelawny. The heart was kept by Mary Shelley until her dying day and the ashes have are preserved in the British Library.
Presenter Jonathan Foyle says: "When he went down with his boat, it was not just his life that was lost, it was the Romantic Age."
Where can it be found? At the British Library, London.
Chris Fletcher, literary manuscripts curator, says: "In a sense this is an encapsulation of the myth of the Romantics."
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