Q 01/05

In which year was Percy Bysshe Shelley born?

A) 1770

B) 1788

C) 1792

D) 1795

Answer · why

C) 1792

He was born at Field Place in Warnham, Sussex, the eldest son of a baronet's heir who sat in Parliament.

Q 02/05

How old was Shelley when he died?

A) 29

B) 31

C) 33

D) 36

Answer · why

A) 29

He drowned in a boating accident in 1822, having produced most of his best work in four years of Italian exile.

Q 03/05

Shelley's second wife wrote which famous novel?

A) Jane Eyre

B) Frankenstein

C) Wuthering Heights

D) Pride and Prejudice

Answer · why

B) Frankenstein

Mary Shelley conceived the story during a wet Swiss summer with Byron in 1816.

Q 04/05

Shelley wrote Ozymandias in a friendly sonnet competition with which banker and writer?

A) Leigh Hunt

B) Horace Smith

C) Edward Williams

D) Thomas Medwin

Answer · why

B) Horace Smith

Smith's own sonnet on the same subject was published a few weeks after Shelley's.

Q 05/05

Ozymandias is the Greek name for which Egyptian pharaoh?

A) Akhenaten

B) Thutmose III

C) Tutankhamun

D) Ramesses II

Answer · why

D) Ramesses II

Shelley began the poem in anticipation of a huge fragment of a Ramesses statue arriving in Britain.