Shelley was so wrong about so much. Despite his famous claim, poets are not the legislators of the world, and he was more unacknowledged than most, both during his short life and long after his death. His published books of fiction were dreadful in every sense. His first published book of verse was withdrawn and destroyed because it included a plagiarised poem. His first published work of non-fictional prose got him expelled from Oxford, and helped to drive him away from his family and his class. His first major poem helped to drive him further away and also to drive his children away from him, and got its publishers prosecuted for 30 years. His second major poem had to be withdrawn and expurgated before publication. Few of his later serious writings, in either verse or prose, were published at the time, and most of those that were published were ignored.

His private life was as unfortunate as his public career was unsuccessful. He eloped with two 16-year-old girls, but wasn't happy with either of them for long; he was always flirting with other women, while other men flirted with his wives. Many of his loved ones died or killed themselves in tragic circumstances. He was the heir to a title and a fortune, but himself died in tragic circumstances before inheriting either. Nearly all the things he said and did were in open opposition to all the powers that were. No wonder he was regarded by the establishment as a sort of devil during his life and as a sort of angel after his death, never as a complete person whose life and work, poetry and prose, thoughts and actions, were all of a piece. No wonder he is remembered almost entirely as the author of a few lyrics reprinted in anthologies and recited by schoolchildren.

Yet Shelley was so right about so much, as a few people recognized at the time and as more and more people have realised during the subsequent century and a half. His passion for liberty, equality and fraternity; his hatred of Christianity, monarchy and war; his belief in free thought, free speech and free love: all the things which worked against him at the beginning of the 19th century are working for him at the end of the 20th century. More than almost any other figure in our literature, he speaks more clearly and directly to us now than ever before. The gradual acceptance of Shelley has come from the devoted work of a succession of enthusiastic amateurs and a handful of professional scholars. But there is still no definitive edition of his writings, or even a satisfactory volume of either his poetry or his prose; there wasn't a biography which was both reliable and readable until Richard Holmes produced Shelley: The Pursuit seven years ago. The scholars must look after themselves, though they do seem to take a lot of time and make a lot of trouble sorting out Shelley's life and work, but we should take note of the outsiders who bring Shelley to ordinary readers, as in these two books by people who happen to have close connections with this paper.

Claire Tomalin adds Shelley to a long series of short books on great figures and their worlds. Her well-designed large-format volume [Shelley and His World], with more than 100 carefully chosen and clearly reproduced illustrations and an elegantly written and easily read text, contains just about everything a newcomer to Shelley's work needs to know about his life, though there isn't much about his world. Tomalin has produced an excellent compromise between an elementary pamphlet and a full-scale biography, and she also provides a refreshing dose of sense and sensibility about the various problems and puzzles which have always haunted Shelley studies.