The influence of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley is astounding, particularly given the brevity of his life. Although he died shortly before his thirtieth birthday, Shelley in many ways helped to set the tone for the waves of political, economic, and cultural radicalism that would develop over the next two centuries. Born in 1792, and passing away in 1822, Shelley’s legacy serves as that of a figure who symbolized the transition from the period of the Enlightenment into modernity. That he was part of what could reasonably be considered the first family of English radicalism during his time is highly significant. He was the son-in-law of the early anarchist William Godwin, and the husband of Godwin’s daughter Mary, the author of the classic Frankenstein novel, whose mother had been the pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. The literary and poetic works of Shelley, and the radical ideas favored by the family into which he married, and which Shelley espoused, provided a definitive framework through which subsequent generations of radical political and cultural thinkers evolved.
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