Waterlow gives a brief, unpretentious account of the life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who is regarded as one of the finest lyric poets of the English language. Not merely a biography of events, this is an analysis of the age in which Shelley lived his almost 30 years (1792-1822), the character of the young man, and the messages embodied in Shelley's poems. A few quotes: "In the case of most great writers our interest in them as persons is derived from our interest in them as writers; we are not very curious about them except for reasons that have something to do with their art. With Shelley it is different. During his life he aroused fears and hatreds, loves and adorations, that were quite irrelevant to literature; and even now, when he has become a classic, he still causes excitement as a man." "The object of these pages is not to idealise either his life, his character, or his works. The three are inseparably connected, and to understand one we must understand all." Sir Sydney Philip Perigal Waterlow (22 October 1878 -- 4 December 1944) was a British diplomat, ambassador to Greece from 1933 to 1939, and attache in Washington in 1901, among other posts. Waterlow left the Foreign Office in 1905 to became a University extension lecturer until the outbreak of World War I; thence he returned to the Foreign Office. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a first class in the Classics Tripos (B.A. 1900, M.A. 1905). Waterlow was also an author, editor, and translator of several literary and classical works."