So, because you mentioned Shelley specifically, I think it's worth pointing out that poetry wasn't necessarily a "respected" pursuit in his day. Shelley's "Defense of Poetry" is sometimes taught in English Literature courses, but it's actually a response to an article by Thomas Love Peacock. Peacock was a close friend of Shelley's but also a poet, essayist, and critic. In 1820, Peacock published an article in Literary Miscellany called "The Four Ages of Poetry" that was extremely critical of contemporary poetry/poets.

To quote:

While the historian and the philosopher are advancing in, and accelerating, the progress of knowledge, the poet is wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, and raking up the ashes of dead savages to find gewgaws and rattles for the grown babies of the age.

He specifically states that "It can never make a philosopher, nor a statesman, nor in any class of life an useful or rational man", and that people who enjoy poetry are better off studying the work of ancient & modern "golden age" poets because:

in whatever degree poetry is cultivated, it must necessarily be to the neglect of some branch of useful study: and it is a lamentable spectacle to see minds, capable of better things, running to seed in the specious indolence of these empty aimless mockeries of intellectual exertion. Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect in the infancy of civil society: but for the maturity of mind to make a serious business of the playthings of its childhood, is as absurd as for a full-grown man to rub his gums with coral, and cry to be charmed to sleep by the jingle of silver bells.

Therefore, he suggests that, if people will insist on writing poetry despite all arguments to the contrary, that it ought to be written for an audience that has no inclination for scientific and philosophical pursuits and target instead those "who are indifferent to any thing beyond being charmed, moved, excited, affected, and exalted: charmed by harmony, moved by sentiment, excited by passion, affected by pathos, and exalted by sublimity". As a result, poetry will become increasingly less relevant and men will be funneled into more valuable "intellectual pursuits" rather than becoming poets or critics. Peacock never explicitly states that these sentimental, charmed readers would be women, but he is clearly critical of the men who devote their lives to poetry.

Both Peacock and Shelley's essays are collected here if you want to read in more detail.