Like his great contemporaries, John Keats and Lord Byron, Shelley suffered an untimely death, but still managed to stun the world with a wide-ranging body of work, including poetry, drama, and criticism. His poetry is that of a young man, a lover of nature and fiercely critical of institutionalized corruption, and virtuosic in his use of language and imagery.

Anthologist George Herbert Clarke summed up Shelley as follows:

"A man of penetrative intention and restless imagining, less anxious to lead than to love, he reveals himself in spirit- winged words as one of the most intimate and powerful among the stimulators of the soul, the builders of 'that great poem,' to use his own words, 'which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world.'"

This collection includes many of Shelley's best-known shorter poems, as well as three longer works: "Ode to Liberty", "The Sensitive Plant", and "The Triumph of Life".