Being Shelley

Indispensable… vital… startlingly good and original… Wroe is a writer of unusual excellence and a reader of exceptional sensitivity * Spectator *
Being Shelley becomes a mirror of the poet himself - whimsical, various, subtle, and iridescent and evanescent. That is, no doubt, the book that Wroe proposed to write and she has succeeded – Peter Ackroyd * The Times *
Fascinating, experimental… A voyage into the mind that wrote the poetry and struggled with ideas, some mad, some sane, all interesting… As a history of how an unusual creative mind worked, it offers a new departure in the way biography is written – Lucasta Miller * Sunday Times *
Amazing new book on the poet… Abandoning the usual conventions, she relates Shelley’s life in an incomplete and non chronological way… It’s a bold and risky concept and she pulls it off brilliantly… this really does convey the poet’s mind and the excitement of reading the original … Ann Wroe’s wonderful, effortlessly eloquent book is like sharing a corner of his mind – Claire Harman * Evening Standard *
Singularly exhilarating – Richard Holmes * Guardian *
Spellbinding… eye-opening… brilliant * Times Literary Supplement *
It is the closest thing to a masterclass with Shelley himself * Daily Telegraph *
A wonderful achievement… At any single point the narrative is aware of the entire trajectory of Shelley’s mind and career, so thorough is the assimilation of his intellect, imagination and emotional life. It succeeds wonderfully in getting inside what it was like to ‘be’ PBS’ – Nicholas Roe
Her collage shimmers like reflections on water, trembles, dissolves and returns to form under the action of an invisible breeze or current… Wroe’s emotional responses to her research are palpable * Sunday Herald *
Ann Wroe wanting to do Shelley’s exasperating spirit justice, sets herself a challenge… She persuades us; we read Shelley with new eyes, freed of the gossip of conventional biography and academic doggedness… she reads process back into the work, occasions back into the poems. And she gives us what we need to read the work whole * Independent *

Ann Wroe is the Obituaries editor of The Economist, and has written its weekly obituary for almost two decades. She is the author of eight previous works of non-fiction, including biographies of Pontius Pilate (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award and the W.H. Smith Award), Perkin Warbeck, Shelley, Orpheus (winner of the Criticos Prize) and St Francis. She lives in Brighton and London.

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