Wild Spirit: The Story of Percy Bysshe Shelley

This fictionalized biography begins awkwardly, but melodramatic scenes and pompous language ultimately give way to a compelling, harshly realistic portrait of the English poet (1792-1822) and his milieu. Morley ( The Summer Woods ) shows the idealistic, iconoclastic and unyielding Shelley attracting worshipful followers even as he is expelled from Oxford for atheism. Married at 19, scraping by on expectation of an inheritance, he wanders through England, Ireland and Wales accompanied by his admirers. Always in pursuit of a utopian community, he seeks out the poet Robert Southey and the philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary instantly seizes upon Shelley as a soul mate. With vigor and a keen eye for venality, hypocrisy and cruelty, Morley depicts the various groups clustered around the charismatic poet. Her descriptions of Shelley's bouts with depression and nightmares create a mood of impending doom that foreshadows his end. An infusion of unnecessary characters and too many scenes of domestic spats among the servants slightly diminish the impact of the final chapters, but overall this is an absorbing story, forcefully told. ( Dec. )