Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Sussex, England, in August 1792, the son of prosperous and conventional British MP Timothy Shelley, who later would have difficulty accepting his son’s aberrant lifestyle. As a boy, Shelley demonstrated signs of extreme intelligence, including boredom at Eton College. His unchallenged mind led him to invent tall tales of a gothic nature, earning him the nickname “mad Shelley” among his peers. While only sixteen, Shelley was accepted to Oxford University, but his career there was cut drastically short as a result of a pamphlet he published titled “The Necessity of Atheism” (co-authored with lifelong friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg) in 1810. The document...
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