 Evading Sir Timothy 's ban on a biography , Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband 's life and work . " I am to justify his ways , " she had declared in 1824 ; " I am to make him beloved to all posterity . " It was this goal , argues Blumberg , that led her to present Percy 's work to the public in the " most popular form possible " . To tailor his works for a Victorian audience , she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet . As Mary Favret writes , " the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself " . Mary glossed Percy 's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism , arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering . She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence , domesticity , and love of the natural world . Portraying herself as Percy 's " practical muse " , she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote . 
