Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was a renowned literary figure, whose reputation was established at a young age by the publication of Queen Mab (1813); Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude; Mont Blanc (both written in 1816); and The Revolt of Islam (1817). He was a friend of the poet Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, the essayist and bold defender of the Romantics, including Shelley, Byron, and John Keats. After his second marriage to Mary Godwin (who would win her own fame as the author of Frankenstein), Shelley moved permanently from England to Italy in 1818, and there wrote his greatest works, among them "Ode to the West Wind" (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820). His life was tragically cut short when he drowned in a boating accident off the northwest coast of Italy, near Viareggio, on July 8, 1822.
