Son of a country squire, Percy Bysshe Shelley was thrown out of Oxford at the age of nineteen for his views against religion, the monarchy, and the war with France. He never recanted. Instead, he eloped with his sixteen-year-old girlfriend and then left her three years later for another. Together they moved to Lake Geneva where he began a very productive friendship with Lord Byron. And when Byron moved to Italy, the couple followed. Over the next few years, in spite of the death of his two children, Shelley did his best work. His prospects were bright. But while sailing home in a storm, his boat capsized and he drowned at the age of thirty.
