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The eldest son of the MP for Horsham (and later baronet), and destined for a parliamentary career, Shelley was mischievous and highly imaginative as a child. Conventionally educated at Eton and Oxford, he was deeply unhappy and rebellious. His short life was poetically intense with a tragic premature end when his schooner the "Ariel" went down in a violent summer squall in the Gulf of La Spezia (the Gulf of Poets). Shelley and his friend were returning from a visit to Byron at Livorno, and his drowned body was found with a book of Keats' poetry in his coat pocket.
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Western Europe
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