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In February 1811 an Oxford undergraduate of eighteen had a sixteen-page pamphlet printed in Worthing and sent a copy to the head of every Oxford college. It was called The Necessity of Atheism, and on 25 March 1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg were expelled from University College for refusing to say whether he had written it. In the eleven years he had left he eloped twice, settled in Italy in 1818, and wrote Prometheus Unbound, “Ode to the West Wind”, “Ozymandias” and an elegy for John Keats. Most of his books were printed in runs of about 250 copies and sold poorly. He drowned in the Gulf of La Spezia on 8 July 1822, a month before his thirtieth birthday, and some of his best-known work, The Mask of Anarchy and A Defence of Poetry among it, was printed only after his death. This guide covers his 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1811–1840 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s best-known book is Prometheus Unbound (1820), a lyrical drama published with “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark”. His other key works include Queen Mab (1813), The Cenci (1819), Adonais (1821), The Mask of Anarchy (written 1819, printed 1832) and the essay A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, printed 1840). Start with the 1820 Prometheus Unbound volume: its short poems are the way in, and the drama is there when you are ready.
Where to Start with Percy Bysshe Shelley
If you want his defining book
→ Prometheus Unbound (1820) — the 1820 volume with “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark”.
If you want his political poetry
→ The Mask of Anarchy (1832) — his answer to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.
If you want one long poem in a sitting
→ Adonais (1821) — 55 stanzas for John Keats.
If you want his ideas in prose
→ A Defence of Poetry (1840) — the essay that ends with poets as legislators.
12 Percy Bysshe Shelley Books, in Order
The Necessity of Atheism
A sixteen-page pamphlet arguing that the existence of God cannot be proved, printed by Phillips of Worthing and first issued on 13 or 14 February 1811, probably with help from Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Shelley sent a signed copy to every head of an Oxford college, and his refusal to deny authorship led to his expulsion. Most copies were destroyed; six are known to survive. A revised, expanded version appeared in 1813 as a note to Queen Mab.
Queen Mab
His first major poem, with long prose notes, printed privately in 1813 in an edition of 250 copies. The notes include the revised Necessity of Atheism and his case for a vegetarian diet. Pirate printers kept it in circulation: by 1845 it had gone through 14 official and pirated editions and was widely read by Owenists and Chartists.
Alastor
A poem in blank verse, written in 1815 and published early in 1816 together with shorter poems. Its title figure, the spirit of solitude, follows a young poet in search of an ideal.
The Revolt of Islam
A long poem of revolution centred on two figures, Laon and Cythna. It was first printed as Laon and Cythna, hastily withdrawn, and reissued in revised form under this title in January 1818.
The Cenci
A tragedy in five acts, finished in September 1819 and published the same year, based on the story of Beatrice Cenci and her father in Rome. It was the only one of his works to reach an authorised second edition in his lifetime.
Prometheus Unbound
Shelley takes his cue from Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, drawing also on Plato, Herodotus, Boccaccio and Milton. He wrote it in Italy between August 1818 and December 1819, adding the fourth act after he thought the drama complete. The volume, published in August 1820, also contains “Ode to the West Wind”, “The Cloud”, “To a Skylark”, “The Sensitive Plant” and “Ode to Liberty”.
Epipsychidion
A long poem on ideal love, written and published in 1821, during his last years in Italy.
Adonais
A pastoral elegy for John Keats in 55 Spenserian stanzas (495 lines), in the tradition of Milton’s Lycidas. Shelley wrote it in spring 1821 after hearing of Keats’s death, and it was published in July 1821. In his preface he blamed hostile reviews, in the Quarterly Review and elsewhere, for Keats’s death, a claim now seen as mistaken. The Rome section looks towards the Protestant Cemetery, where Keats and Shelley’s young son William were buried.
Hellas
A lyrical drama published in 1822, written in support of the Greek struggle for independence. Its choruses are often printed on their own in anthologies.
Posthumous Poems
The collection Mary Shelley gathered from his papers two years after his death. It first printed Julian and Maddalo, completed in 1819, and The Triumph of Life, the long poem he left unfinished in 1822. The biographer James Bieri argues that her editions of 1824 and 1839 played down his radicalism.
The Mask of Anarchy
A poem of 372 lines, mostly in four-line stanzas, written in Italy in 1819 in response to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester. Shelley sent it to The Examiner, but Leigh Hunt held it back; Edward Moxon published it in London in 1832 with a preface by Hunt. Its line “Ye are many—they are few” has been recited at protests from Tiananmen Square in 1989 to Tahrir Square in 2011.
A Defence of Poetry
An essay written in March 1821 arguing that poetry and the imagination are the source of moral and social progress. It was not published until 1840, eighteen years after his death. It ends with his best-known sentence: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
In What Order to Read Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley’s books do not continue from one to the next, so you can read by mood. Publication order is misleading, though: The Mask of Anarchy, Julian and Maddalo and A Defence of Poetry were all written between 1819 and 1821, the same years as Prometheus Unbound and Adonais, but were printed only after he died.
The easiest way in is the short poems: “Ozymandias”, then the odes in the 1820 Prometheus Unbound volume. Leave Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam, the long early poems, until you know whether his ideas interest you as much as his music.
A reading path
1. “Ozymandias” (1818)
2. Prometheus Unbound (1820), the shorter poems first
3. Adonais (1821)
4. The Mask of Anarchy (1832)
5. A Defence of Poetry (1840)
Everything Else Percy Bysshe Shelley Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early Gothic novels
2
2 books · 1810–1811
- 1810Zastrozzia Gothic romance published while he was still at Eton
- 1811St. Irvynehis second Gothic novel, written in 1810
Other books
3
3 books · 1817–1820
- 1817History of a Six Weeks’ Tourtravel journal and letters written mostly by Mary Shelley, with the first printing of his “Mont Blanc”
- 1819Rosalind and Helena poem written in 1818, with shorter poems
- 1820Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyranta verse drama
The years · 1792–1822
Quick facts about Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Known for
- He was an English Romantic poet and radical who wrote about liberty, love and the power of the imagination, and whose reputation grew only a generation after he drowned at 29.
- 1792
- Born at Field Place, Sussex
- 1811
- Expelled from Oxford
- 1822
- Drowns in the Gulf of La Spezia
- Born
- 4 August 1792, Field Place, Warnham, Sussex
- Education
- Syon House Academy, Eton College, and University College, Oxford, from which he was expelled on 25 March 1811
- Married
- Harriet Westbrook, 1811; Mary Godwin (Mary Shelley), 30 December 1816
- Lived
- In Italy from 1818 until his death
- Died
- 8 July 1822, drowned while sailing the Don Juan in the Gulf of La Spezia, with Edward Williams
- Buried
- Protestant Cemetery, Rome; his grave is inscribed “Cor Cordium” (heart of hearts)
The red mark is 1820: Prometheus Unbound, published with “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark”.
How Percy Bysshe Shelley Writes: Ideas Set to Music
Shelley wrote poetry as argument. Queen Mab comes with prose notes on atheism and diet; Prometheus Unbound reworks Aeschylus into a drama of liberation; A Defence of Poetry claims that poets shape the laws and morals of their time. The politics are rarely hidden, which is why radical readers, from the Chartists to Karl Marx, Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw, took him up.
He was also a restless technician. He used blank verse in Alastor, Spenserian stanzas in Adonais, a five-act stage tragedy in The Cenci, a sonnet in “Ozymandias”, and plain four-line stanzas in The Mask of Anarchy.
In his lifetime most reviewers attacked his views and private life more than his verse, and the Examiner of Leigh Hunt was one of the few friendly papers. Matthew Arnold later called him a “beautiful and ineffectual angel”, while Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats counted him an influence. For the novelist he lived and worked with, see the books of Mary Shelley.
Frequently asked questions about Percy Bysshe Shelley’s books
How many books has Percy Bysshe Shelley written?
This page lists 12 key books, from The Necessity of Atheism (1811) to A Defence of Poetry (1840), plus five more in the bibliography: two early Gothic novels, the travel book he wrote with Mary Shelley, Rosalind and Helen and Swellfoot the Tyrant. Three of the key books were first printed after his death in 1822.
What are Percy Bysshe Shelley’s books in order?
The Necessity of Atheism (1811), Queen Mab (1813), Alastor (1816), The Revolt of Islam (1818), The Cenci (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), Epipsychidion (1821), Adonais (1821), Hellas (1822), Posthumous Poems (1824), The Mask of Anarchy (1832) and A Defence of Poetry (1840).
Where should I start with Percy Bysshe Shelley?
With the 1820 Prometheus Unbound volume. Read the shorter poems in it first, “Ode to the West Wind”, “To a Skylark” and “The Cloud”, then the four-act drama. If you want something shorter still, begin with the sonnet “Ozymandias”.
What is Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most famous work?
His most famous single poem is the sonnet “Ozymandias”; his most important book is Prometheus Unbound (1820). His most quoted sentence, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”, comes from A Defence of Poetry.
When was Ozymandias published?
Shelley wrote it in December 1817, in a friendly competition with his friend Horace Smith, who wrote a sonnet on the same subject. It was first published in Leigh Hunt’s The Examiner on 11 January 1818 under the pen name “Glirastes”. Ozymandias is the Greek name for the pharaoh Ramesses II.
Why was Shelley expelled from Oxford?
He entered University College, Oxford in October 1810 and in February 1811 issued The Necessity of Atheism, sending a copy to every head of college. Called before the college, he refused to say whether he had written it, and on 25 March 1811 he and Thomas Jefferson Hogg were expelled.
Why is Shelley’s private life controversial?
In 1811 he eloped with Harriet Westbrook and married her in Edinburgh; in 1814 he left her for Mary Godwin. Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in December 1816, and Shelley married Mary on 30 December. After a long case the Court of Chancery gave custody of his two children with Harriet to foster parents, on the grounds that he had abandoned her without cause and was an atheist.
How did Percy Bysshe Shelley die?
He drowned on 8 July 1822 in the Gulf of La Spezia, off the Italian coast, while sailing his boat the Don Juan with Edward Williams and a boat boy. He was 29. His body came ashore near Viareggio, where it was cremated on the beach on 16 August; his ashes are buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.
Was Percy Bysshe Shelley married to Mary Shelley?
Yes. They left England together in 1814 and married on 30 December 1816. Mary, the author of Frankenstein (1818), edited his Posthumous Poems in 1824 and his collected poems in 1839.
What is The Mask of Anarchy about?
The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in Manchester. Shelley wrote it in Italy and sent it to The Examiner, but Leigh Hunt thought the public not ready for it and it was only published in 1832. Its call to the people, “Ye are many—they are few”, made it a poem of nonviolent protest, recited in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Tahrir Square in 2011.
Footnotes
- Percy Bysshe Shelley — Wikipedia
- The Necessity of Atheism — Wikipedia
- Adonais — Wikipedia
- The Masque of Anarchy — Wikipedia
- On This Day in 1820: Prometheus Unbound is Published — British Association for Romantic Studies
- Ozymandias notes — University of Delaware British Literature Wiki
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840)
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