Claire Tomalin writes biographies that are as compulsive to read as they are insightful, and her narrative virtuosity was rewarded in 2002 when her biography of Samuel Pepys, published by Penguin, won the Whitbread Book of the Year. In Young Bysshe Tomalin tells the story of the formative years of the poet Shelley and brings the young man and the world that influenced him so profoundly vividly to life.