Being Shelley: The Poet's Search for Himself

Description

A startlingly original new look at Shelley, a stunning work of scholarship and imagination by one of the most remarkable non-fiction writers in Britain. Four questions consumed Shelley and coloured everything he wrote. Who, or what, was he? What was his purpose? Where had he come from? And where was he going? He sought the answers in order to free and empower not only himself, but the whole human race. His revolution would shatter the earth's illusions, shock men and women with new visions, find true Love and Liberty - and take everyone with him. Ann Wroe's book takes the life of one of England's greatest poets and turns it inside out, bringing us the life of the poet rather than the man. The result is a journey that is as passionate and exhilarating as it is astonishing. This is Shelley as he has never been seen before.

Ann Wroe is the Obituaries editor of The Economist, and has written its weekly obituary for almost two decades. She is the author of eight previous works of non-fiction, including biographies of Pontius Pilate (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award and the W.H. Smith Award), Perkin Warbeck, Shelley, Orpheus (winner of the Criticos Prize) and St Francis. She lives in Brighton and London.

Indispensable... vital... startlingly good and original... Wroe is a writer of unusual excellence and a reader of exceptional sensitivity * Spectator * Being Shelley becomes a mirror of the poet himself - whimsical, various, subtle, and iridescent and evanescent. That is, no doubt, the book that Wroe proposed to write and she has succeeded -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times * Fascinating, experimental... A voyage into the mind that wrote the poetry and struggled with ideas, some mad, some sane, all interesting... As a history of how an unusual creative mind worked, it offers a new departure in the way biography is written -- Lucasta Miller * Sunday Times * Amazing new book on the poet... Abandoning the usual conventions, she relates Shelley's life in an incomplete and non chronological way... It's a bold and risky concept and she pulls it off brilliantly... this really does convey the poet's mind and the excitement of reading the original ... Ann Wroe's wonderful, effortlessly eloquent book is like sharing a corner of his mind -- Claire Harman * Evening Standard * Singularly exhilarating -- Richard Holmes * Guardian *