The Poet as Economist : Shelley’s Critique of Paper Money and the British National Debt

Was Percy Shelley, the great English Romantic poet, a socialist? This may sound like an odd question, since, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word socialist was not even coined until 1833, that is, 11 years after Shelley died. Yet, despite the fact that Shelley could not have been aware of what we normally think of as socialist ideas, later socialists have claimed him for their lineage.

Volume 13, Number 1 (1997)