Does anyone else think Percy Shelley's reputation based on his wife's, Mary Shelley (wrote Frankenstein)?

Percy Shelley's reputation is based on his own poetry. Academic circles tend to regard Percy Shelley much, much higher than Mary Shelley, who (Mary) wrote teen stories - maybe like Stephen King, on a very good day - rather than the more intellectual poetry which Percy Shelley excelled in.

   I have to say I sympathise with you. I wrote a slightly similar question to yours a while ago, saying Percy Shelley did nothing for me and Mary Shelley seemed to me to be the really gifted one. Scholars and intellectuals don't praise storytellers, though, they praise people with things to say and messages to send. To me, Percy Shelley is a nobody like Samuel Pepys (remember him? me either), and I can never get past the feelings of dislike and distance to feel connection.

   I see him as too sentimental. And when someone here said did I think his England in 1819 was sentimental - yep, found it hard to relate to it.

   So, in summary, my view is, Percy Shelley - IQ 100 nonentity. Mary Shelley - underrated genius.

As a reply to you all, I think the stucture is bad as it is said to be in a sonnet, but it doesn't seem like one, the rhymes are annoying inconsistant, which distracts more then it highlights. He picked the ruler based off someone on the news, and he wrote how all lose power eventually, but it was one longest living rulers, multiple generations would know his as their ruler. He also changed Egypt heavily. I do not think it was on purpose either.

Also my teacher said he did not publish many of his workers and was not popular. So was she wrong?

You can't even SPELL Ozymandias so please keep your opinion of it to yourself. 

Until you study ALL the Romantic poets, you have no business commenting on Romantic writers.

When they were alive, Percy was the famous Shelley.  Mary was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of proto feminist treatise "A Vindication of the Rights of Women", which gave her a little fame (or infamy) by association. Shelley and Byron were the gods of literature then.

Now, because of "Frankenstein", Mary is the famous Shelley to the public. Few of us read poetry, so we don't appreciate poets. We read more novels, so novelists have greater fame.

No - I very much doubt that anyone but you could think that.

I most certainly do not agree. I think Shelley was absolutely brilliant. I wrote my Master's Thesis on "Frankenstein" - phenomenal novel, but that hardly detracts from how wonderful Shelley's writing is. To each his or her own and all that, but the man was extremely talented. 

No, of course Shelley's reputation was not based on the fact that his wife (as she became later) wrote "Frankenstein". He was already an established poet before she was published.

So you read one of his sonnets and didn't like it - why, for heaven's sake - it's a perfect poem, what, pray did you find wrong with it? - 'not well structured'? in what way?

Have you read anything else?

Disco Stu - You think Pepys is a nonentity? dear heavens. What was the problem? were you made to read him at school? and what is sentimental about Shelley's poetry? he was an atheist and a revolutionary. Which of his poems have you actually read?

And yes, scholars study novels. It's what we do.