Percy Bysshe Shelley

If the pursuit of truth was ever damned by excessively worldly educators, Percy Bysshe Shelley sought to redeem it. He was restless in a society where, whichever way he looked, he saw conscious oppression, unconscious oppression, and the tyranny of the unimaginative. “God help us!” exclaimed Robert Southey, “the world wants mending, though Shelley did not set about it exactly in the right way.” If the “right way” meant a reverent submission to authority, then Shelley undoubtedly did “set about it” in the ‘wrong’ way.'

'In this Student Guide, Andrew Keanie offers a vivid reappraisal of Shelley’s poetic achievement. Keanie covers many of Shelley’s major works in a way that fully appreciates their “thought-wingèd Liberty” and power to liberate readers with the feeling of hope, and with the further feeling that it is right to hope.

About the author:

Andrew Keanie teaches at the University of Ulster and is a poet and musician. He is the author of Greenwich Exchange titles on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and the Lyrical Ballads.

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ISBN: 978-1-906075-59-0