Shelley's Visions of Death

This book provides the first modern, in-depth analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s engagement with the phenomenon of death. It argues that, for Shelley, this most nebulous of realities represents, first and foremost, possibility: Shelley’s poetic writings on death are both numerous and varied, presenting his reader, with differing degrees of confidence over the course of his brief but brilliant career, with several key visions of what death might be or actually is. Shelley’s Visions of Death stresses the seldom-appreciated fact that death was one of Shelley’s most enduring preoccupations, and also demonstrates the poet’s power to imagine, with startling variety, that which lies beyond the boundaries of experience.