This biography explores the foundations of Shelley's revolutionary poetics--his anger at a system in which the rich lived luxuriously at the expense of the poor and oppressed, causing war, colonialism, and suffering. An anti-monarchist and a forerunner of civil disobedience, Shelley's poetry was considered blasphemous and seditious, and was pirated by the radical press to reach new working class audiences. His revolutionary ideals were espoused by...

"London, 1814: Mary Godwin and her stepsister Jane Clairmont, both sixteen, possess quick minds bolstered by an unconventional upbringing, and have little regard for the rules that other young ladies follow. Mary, whose mother famously advocated for women's rights, rejects the two paths that seem open to her-that of an assistant in her father's bookshop, or an ordinary wife. Though quieter and more reserved than the boisterous Jane, Mary's imagination...

In the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, three poets-Byron, Shelley, and Keats-come to prominence, famous and infamous, for their vivid personalities, and their glamorous, shocking, and sometimes tragic lives. In this electrifying novel, those lives are explored through the eyes of the women who knew and loved them-intensely, scandalously. Four women from widely different backgrounds are linked by a sensational fate....