Wild Spirit: The Story of Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Margaret Morley

Recreates the life of the famous poet who rejected his wealthy family, defied conventions, abandoned his wife to elope with Mary Godwin, and searched for peace and solitude in the wilderness

281 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1992

Reviews

[Helena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly, i'm slightly biased because any book that even mentions Mr Shelley in passing makes me scream like some crazed fan at a Bieber concert. I'm fascinated by PBS and GGB and the rest of the gang, they had such interesting and awesome lives and were utter legends. But their history is also complicated to say the least (possibly all part of the fun) and unless you want to traul through a massive block of text on Wikipedia, "Wild Spirit" is a good place to start. I also hate history books and this is told more like an actual story than in textbook style, which is great. I really enjoyed it and are frankly appalled that the only other review was so negative. I've read plenty about Shelley and the crew and although it was a while ago, i can't remember any glaringly obvious inaccuracies when i read the book.

Long story short, this book deserves three, maybe four stars. But i'll make it five, because Shelley (although not as good of a poet as Byron) is incomprehensibly awesome (ignoring the minor supposed slip-up which probably did happen with his second wife's half sister).

Actually, i wouldn't give it 5 stars. More like 5 hearts!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[Djrmel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving this two stars ONLY if you look at it as very young adult fiction, even though it's not listed as YA at any library or online book store that I could find. As incredibly shallow telling of the life of a very deep and complicated man, this is more travel journal (without any description of the places traveled) than narrative. When it's not doing a "and then he went to..." thing, we get some of the most unlikely dialog between some of the most literate people to have ever walked the earth. Was Mary Shelley really such a clueless nag? Was Byron such a self centered....okay, yeah, that one might be accurate. There are no author notes to say which part of the story is based on fact, or where Morley got her facts, and there's so little historical detail in this book that it's a joke to call it "The Story of Percy Bysshe Shelley". More like, "A brief history of Shelley and the people he knew".