Shelley Expelled from Oxford: His Crime? Publishing an Atheism Pamphlet
Oxford expelled him for a pamphlet he couldn't prove he'd written. Percy Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg distributed *The Necessity of Atheism* anonymously in March 1811, but when college authorities demanded they deny authorship, nineteen-year-old Shelley refused on principle. Twenty minutes. That's how long the disciplinary hearing lasted before both students were kicked out. His father, a Member of Parliament, was mortified and cut off his allowance. But the expulsion freed Shelley from conventional life entirely—within months he'd eloped with a sixteen-year-old, began writing the radical poetry that would define Romanticism, and joined the circle that would produce *Frankenstein*. The university that punished him for questioning God created the man who'd write "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
March 25, 1811
215 years ago
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