Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet who wrote several essays on the subject of vegetarianism and animal rights, including the 1813 book, A Vindication of Natural Diet.

[8] Remarks from Salt regarding the lecture, where that during his life in London, Bracknell, and Marlow, the poet Shelley continued to be in the main an abstainer from flesh-meat, his views on the humanities, and the hygienics of diet, which were printed in the November 22, 1890 edition of The Academy.

He concludes his notes from the lecture by reiterating Axon, in that Shelley's diet "was not a mere dietetic whim, but an endeavour after a higher and better life for mankind, an attempt to bring the universe into sympathetic harmony, and to provide a bounteous feast from which none should be excluded.

[10][11] Axon continued to give addresses on these topics for the next two decades, such as one which is entitled "Some Famous Vegetarians," which began with the ancient Indian sage Asoka and ended with Shelley, contending that their diet "was no hindrance to their greatness."

[13] A copy, signed by English writer, critic, and fellow Shelley Society member William Michael Rossetti, was for sale in 1939 at the former printing house and antiquarian bookshop in London, Sotheran's, for 15 shillings.

"[10] A notable facsimile reprint was made by Haskell House, in 1971, which was 16 pages in total length, in a demy octavo collation, and selling for nearly six dollars two years after this publication.

[22] It is cited in many publications, such as the work Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, which uses the pamphlet to reflect on Shelley's sometimes wavering adherence to the natural diet throughout the later years of his life, as well as referencing the inscription on his grave, which was a line from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

[28][8] Much of the pamphlet focuses on the time that the Shelleys spent in the village of Marlow, Buckinghamsire, along with their close friend, novelist Thomas Love Peacock, whose home they shared.

Axon cites Irish critic and poet Edward Dowden's Life, noting that "it was, indeed, a point of honour with Shelley to prove that some grit lay under his outward appearance of weakness and excitable nerves; for he was an apostle of the Vegetarian faith, and a water drinker, and must not discredit the doctrine which he preached and practised.

[30] It also notes some of his instances of relapses, as recorded by Hogg and Peacock, along with a letter from his son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, which also recounts: "I think I remember my mother telling me that he gave it up to a great extent in his later years—not from want of faith, but from the inconvenience.