Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Symonds was a 19th century English poet and literary critic. Renaissance in Italy was his major work. While the taboos of Victorian England prevented Symonds from writing about homosexuality, his works contained strong implications and some of the first direct references to male-male sexual love in English literature. Percy Blysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was a major English Romantic poet who was considered to be the greatest lyric poet in the English language. His major works were long visionary poems including, Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life. Shelley was a strong advocate for social justice for the 'lower classes'. He witnessed many of the mistreatments occurring in the domestication and slaughtering of animals and he became a fighter for the rights of all living things.