Percy Bysshe Shelley is generally considered to be one of the greatest lyric poets of all time. His work includes ‘Ozymandias’, ‘Adonais’, ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ and ‘Prometheus Unbound’.
He was born in 1792, at a time of social and political upheaval throughout Europe. This violence and search for change is reflected in much of his work and he was never afraid to speak out about the issues he believed in.
Besides his literary output, he is also famous for his lifestyle, particularly his elopement with his second wife Mary which forced him into exile in Italy. His radicalism and atheism are well-documented but his vegetarianism was also an integral part of his character. (When he left his first wife he did not forget to implore her not to return to eating meat).
Shelley wrote several essays on the subject, including ‘A Vindication of Natural Diet’ and ‘On the Vegetable System of Diet’. He believed that "If the use of animal food be, in consequence, subversive to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the injustice and the barbarity which is exercised toward these miserable victims” and most strongly of all that "it is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust."
Shelley was plagued by ill-health and it has been suggested that this was as a consequence of his vegetarianism. It is true he did not have our advanced knowledge of nutrition and his meal of choice was apparently dried bread and red wine but few people would have managed a balanced diet two hundred years ago even if they did eat meat.
He died at just age thirty but his death was due to drowning not poor digestion. His boat capsized in the Gulf of Spezia on July 8th 1812.