A question often levelled at writers is ‘why do you write?’ It’s one I’ve mulled over myself often enough (a compulsion, a fascination with language, a head full of stories I want to share, and the conclusion I come to most often, a simple need for communication). As I was writing The Aziola’s Cry, I started wondering what Percy Bysshe Shelley’s answer to that question would be. 

He has the compulsion from childhood, clearly, as he and his sister Elizabeth managed to publish a small collection of poetry in their youth. But where Elizabeth seems to have left the hobby aside, it became a lifetime’s vocation for Percy Bysshe. 

There are two significant answers to why Shelley wrote, and I believe they can be summarized in two of his most famous quotes. 

The first is a bold statement that occurs in his essay Defence of Poetry: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” 

This is perfect for a poet so political and philosophical. We see him picking up his pen time and again when he sees something amiss in the world. The publication of his that had the most impact in his lifetime was probably the pamphlet he published while at Oxford, The Necessity of Atheism, and the person it impacted most was himself, seeing him expelled from university and branded a dangerous radical for the rest of his life. On closer inspection, the title is probably the most shocking thing; Shelley talks earnestly about the dangers of corruption and hypocrisy in the structures of Christianity. Although he maintained an antagonistic relationship with the church, he greatly admired the actions and teachings of Jesus Christ, and was spiritual in his way, later saying he was a Pantheist rather than Atheist, and often talked of the ‘spirit of the universe.’ For more please go to - https://www.historythroughfiction.com/blog/the-radical-spirit-of-shelley