The Masque of Anarchy

Percy Bysshe Shelley is a polarizing figure of English Romanticism. He is alternately praised as one of the finer English Romantic poets and vilified as the least talented of the so-called “second generation” of English Romantics (Shelley, George Gordon “Lord” Byron, and John Keats). His life was marked by tragedy, tumultuous relationships, financial woe, radical politics, and a fervent desire to challenge authority and realize one’s true potential. After his death by drowning in 1822 at age 29, his second wife, Mary Shelley, edited his works for publication. His writings achieved greater fame after he died, inspiring fellow poets like Robert Browning and W. B. Yeats and political activists like Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi.

Shelley’s radical social and political beliefs often sparked extreme backlash, so much so that Shelley fled to Italy in 1818. Shelley’s long ballad poem The Masque of Anarchy was written in 1819, immediately after he heard about the events of the Peterloo Massacre, a slaughtering of peaceful protestors gathered to call for reform. The poem was not immediately published due to fear of prosecution for seditious libel of the English government. Instead, the poem was published posthumously in 1832.