workingclasshistory:

On this day, 4 August 1792, radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born near Horsham in Sussex. He was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 for contributing to an atheist pamphlet, and soon married Mary, author of Frankenstein. He had a tragic life and died young, but wrote some of the greatest English Romantic poetry, including The Masque of Anarchy, which he penned in the wake of the Peterloo massacre, which ends with this fiery appeal to the working class: “Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number— Shake your chains to earth like dew– Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few.” We have made a podcast episode about the Peterloo massacre with film director Mike Leigh, which includes a clip of actor Maxine Peake reading Shelley’s poem: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/11/07/e15-the-peterloo-massacre-with-mike-leigh/ https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1180952492089899/?type=3