A Defence of Poetry

"A Defence of Poetry" is an unfinished essay by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in February and March 1821 that the poet put aside and never completed.^[1] The text was published posthumously in 1840 in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments.^[2] Its final sentence expresses Shelley's famous proposition that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

^ Ernest Bernbaum, ed., Anthology of Romanticism, 3rd ed. rev. & enlarged (New York: Ronald Press, 1948), p. 990.
^ Sandy, Mark. "A Defence of Poetry" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. 25 August 2004. The Literary Encyclopaedia

[1] Ernest Bernbaum, ed., Anthology of Romanticism, 3rd ed. rev. & enlarged (New York: Ronald Press, 1948), p. 990.

[2] Sandy, Mark. "A Defence of Poetry" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. 25 August 2004. The Literary Encyclopaedia

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