Percy Bysshe Shelley

             Percy Bysshe Shelley was a radical with a conservative background.  He was against injustice and oppression, especially in schools.  He was expelled from Oxford, for writing a pamphlet called “The Necessity of Atheism” with Thomas Jefferson Hogg.    He married Harriet Westbrook even though he was against the institution of marriage.  He left his wife and felt to France with Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin and invited Harriet to come live with them as a sister.  Harriet drowned herself while she was pregnant by an unknown lover and Percy Shelley lost custody of his two children.  He wrote best when he was in great despair.    He was a radical literary hero.