John Addington Symonds (1840-93), well known as an author, poet and critic, wrote this biography of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) in an attempt to portray the complete man. Shelley, Symonds writes, was more than a controversial atheist. He was full of earnest conviction, enthusiasm, and intellectual vigour, but also extravagance, crudity and presumption. Published in 1878 in the first series of English Men of Letters, this book thus provides an account of a literary life famously cut short, describing a writer whose intellectual and poetic legacy was perhaps not fully appreciated in the Victorian period, when the response to his poems was frequently coloured by antipathy to his revolutionary ideas and his unconventional private life, as well as to his loudly proclaimed atheism.
  • ISBN10 1532902611
  • ISBN13 9781532902611
  • Publish Date 2 May 2016 (first published 18 May 2008)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Imprint Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Format Paperback (US Trade)
  • Pages 206
  • Language English