Person    | Male  Born 4/8/1792  Died 8/7/1822

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Categories: Poetry, Seriously Famous

Countries: Italy

Poet. Born at Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex. Had a habit of eloping with and then marrying 16 or 17 year olds: first Harriet Westbrook. When she, pregnant, drowned herself in the Serpentine Percy waited 2 weeks and then married Mary Godwin with whom he had been living for the previous 2 years.

Although he couldn't swim and often predicted that he would die by drowning, Shelley spent the summer of 1822 sailing on the Bay of Lerici. A storm threw him and others overboard. The bodies were washed ashore 10 days later and, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, a cremation took place on the beach. Shelley's heart was saved and given to Mary who carried it with her all her life, taking it to her own grave (or their son kept it and took it to his grave, stories vary). Shelley's ashes were later buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Commemorated ati

Percy & Mary Shelley

After their elopement in July 1814 the Shelleys lived here with Claire Clairm...

Read More

Percy Shelley - SE1 - blue

British History Online: "In 1932 the London County Council erected a memorial...

Read More

Percy Shelley - SE1 - Southwark

Percy Bysshe Shelley lived at No. 26 Nelson Square which formerly stood on a ...

Read More

Percy Shelley - W1

Shelley lodged here after he was expelled from Oxford.

Read More

Somers Town Mural

This mural was commissioned by the GLC in 1980 and moved to this site by St P...

Read More

Show all 6

Other Subjects

Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell

Poet and journalist.  Alice Thompson was born in Barnes.  Her paternal grandmother was an unmarried Creole.  Educated with her sister entirely by their father as they lived a peripatetic life mainl...

Person, Journalism / Publishing, Poetry, Italy

1 memorial
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Diplomat, poet, hedonist and traveller. Born Petworth House, Sussex. Advocated anti-Imperialism, and supported Irish nationalism. Legendary womaniser, one being William Morris's wife, Jane. Married...

Person, Animals, Exploring, Poetry

1 memorial
Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

Author and poet.  Born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St Louis, Missouri, USA. She died, aged 86 years, on 28 May 2014 at her home in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina, USA. Her body was cr...

Person, Gender Issues, Poetry, USA

1 memorial
Hugo Manning

Hugo Manning

Poet.  Born as Lazarus Perkoff at "123 Oxford Street in Mile End Road"  according to UCL Archives.  His parents were Polish Jews so we believe the Mile End bit.  Spent 1938 - 43 in Argentina.  On h...

Person, Poetry, Africa, Argentina, South America

1 memorial
Leigh Hunt

Leigh Hunt

Poet. Born Southgate. Named 'James Henry Leigh Hunt' after the Duke of Chandos, James Henry Leigh, who was employing Hunt's father, a preacher, as tutor to his nephew at the time of Hunt's birth. F...

Person, Literature, Poetry

6 memorials

Previously viewed

Kenny Hunter

Kenny Hunter

From National Galleries Scotland: "Born and raised in Edinburgh, Sculptor Kenny Hunter studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1983 to 1987. His work is heavily influenced by plastic toys, in the col...

Person, Sculpture

1 memorial