Percy Bysshe Shelley Hunt, was later asked by John Bedford Leno whether he preferred Shelley or Byron as a man. He replied: On 8 July 1822, less than a month before his thirtieth birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm on the Gulf of Spezia while returning from Leghorn (Livorno) to Lerici in his sailing boat, the "Don Juan." He was returning from having set up "The Liberal" with the newly arrived Leigh Hunt. The name "Don Juan", a compliment to Byron, was chosen by Edward John Trelawny, a member of the Shelley–Byron Pisan circle. However, according to Mary Shelley's testimony, Shelley changed
Percy Bysshe Shelley opportunity of introducing him to Mary and Shelley to act as bait to lure him to Geneva. The couple and Byron rented neighbouring houses on the shores of Lake Geneva. Regular conversation with Byron had an invigorating effect on Shelley's output of poetry. While on a boating tour the two took together, Shelley was inspired to write his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", often considered his first significant production since "Alastor". A tour of Chamonix in the French Alps inspired "Mont Blanc", a poem in which Shelley claims to have pondered questions of historical inevitability (determinism) and the relationship between the