The Witch of Atlas

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Narrated by Denis Daly and Linda Barrans

The Witch of Atlas is a poetic narrative, written in 1820 and published posthumously in 1824.

The witch is the daughter of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The plot is built around her adventures, during which she creates an androgynous creature, Hermaphroditus, who is both the companion of and the servant to the witch. She plays a series of pranks upon mankind, with the ultimate aim of revealing the essential foolishness of oppression and conflict and enabling the realization of a final Utopia.