by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Burning Books
11/20/2024, staple-bound booklet
SKU: 659675471891
The Necessity of Atheism is a reprint of a 1946 booklet compiling several brief selections from writings by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in the early 19th century, including The Necessity of Atheism (1811), A Letter to Lord Ellenborough (1812), A Refutation of Deism (1814), and Essay on Christianity (1815).
In addition to atheism, Shelley was an early advocate of vegetarianism, free love, nonviolence, freedom of speech, antiauthoritarianism, and other related radical causes of the era. He was mentored by William Godwin (said to be the first modern proponent of anarchism), and married Mary Godwin, the acclaimed author of Frankenstein and daughter of William Godwin and feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Due to his political views and activities, Shelley was placed under surveillance by the Home Office and died in a tragic boating accident before turning thirty. He received postmortem recognition as one of the more influential English Romantic Poets.