1792 - 1822

As reckless and brilliant in his poetry as in his life, Shelley poured out the great body of his major work in less than a decade, and drowned off the coast of Tuscany at the age of 29. He is remembered as a love poet (Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici), a master of plangent lyrics (To a Skylark), of superb odes (To the West Wind) and moving elegies (Adonais). But he was also a philosophical and political essayist, and a gifted translator from German, Italian, Greek, Spanish and Arabic.  Mary Shelley, his second wife, wrote Frankenstein at the age of 19.

1795 - 1821

Though he became the epitome of the young, beautiful, doomed poet of English Romanticism, Keats struck everyone who knew him with his tremendous energy, robust good humour, and zest for living. Born the son of a stables manager from the East End of London he left school at 14 and trained as an apothecary, later embarking on the study of surgery. Although poor, he gave up medicine for poetry and in the twelve months from September 1818 he produced an outpouring of major poetry which is unmatched in English. The symptoms of tuberculosis appeared early in 1820, in which year he travelled to Italy in search of a better climate.  He died in Rome in 1821 at the age of 25.

1792-1881

Edward Trelawny was a great admirer of both Shelley and Byron’s work.  He was a masterful storyteller and in his later years recounted tales of his adventures with Shelley and Byron.  It was Trelawny who identified the bodies of Shelley and Edward Williams (a friend who drowned at the same time) and who supervised their cremations.  He wrote numerous accounts of Shelley’s last days and as he got older he tended to mix fact with fiction for dramatic effect.  He died aged eighty-nine and was buried next to Shelley.  Joseph Severn memorably named him “Lord Byron’s jackal”.