Writing to his publisher in 1813, Shelley expressed the hope that two of his major works "should form one volume"; nearly two centuries later, the second volume of the Johns Hopkins edition of The Complete Poetry fulfills that wish for the first time. This volume collects two important pieces: Queen Mab and The Esdaile Notebook. Privately issued in 1813, Queen Mab was perhaps Shelley's most intellectually ambitious work, articulating his views of science, politics, history, religion, society, and individual human relations. Subtitled A Philosophical Poem: With Notes, it became his most influential - and pirated - poem during much of the nineteenth century, a favorite among reformers and radicals. The Esdaile Notebook, a cycle of fifty-eight early poems, exhibits an astonishing range of verse forms. Unpublished until 1964, this sequence is vital in understanding how the poet mastered his craft. As in the acclaimed first volume, these works have been critically edited by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. The poems are presented as Shelley intended, with textual variants included in footnotes. Following the poems are extensive discussions of the circumstances of their composition and the influences they reflect; their publication or circulation by other means; their reception at the time of publication and in the decades since; their re-publication, both authorized and unauthorized; and their place in Shelley's intellectual and aesthetic development.
Donald H. Reiman is an Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Delaware. Neil Fraistat is a Professor of English at the University of Maryland.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Editorial Overview Abbreviations Texts The Esdaile Notebook [Esd #1] To Harriet ("Whose is the love") [Esd #2] A sabbath Walk [Esd #3] The Crisis [Esd #4] Passion (to the 11 [Esd #5] To Harriet ("Never, O never, shall yonder Sun") [Esd #6] Falshood and Vice a Dialogue [Esd #7] To the Emperors of Russia and Austria who eyed the battle of Austerlitz from the heights whilst Buonaparte was active in the thickest of the fight [Esd #8] To November [Esd #9] Written on a beautiful day in Spring [Esd #10] On leaving London for Wales. [Esd #11] A winter's day [Esd #12] To Liberty [Esd #13] On Robert Emmet's tomb [Esd #14] a Tale of Society as it is from facts 1811 Supplement: Version in Letter to Hitchener, 7 January 1812 [Esd #15] The solitary 1810 [Esd #16] The Monarch's funeral An Anticipation 1810 [Esd #17] To the Republicans of North America Supplement: Version in Letter to Hitchener, 14 February 1812 [Esd #18] Written at Cwm Ellan 1811 [Esd #19] To Death Supplement: Version in Hogg Manuscript, ca. 1810 [Esd #20] "Dark Spirit of the desart rude" [Esd #21] "The pale, the cold and the moony smile" [Esd #22] "Death-spurning rocks!" [Esd #23] The Tombs [Esd #24] To Harriet ("It is not blasphemy to hope") [Esd #25] Sonnet: To Harriet on her birth day, August 1, 1812 [Esd #26] Sonnet: To a balloon, laden with Knowledge [Esd #27] Sonnet: On launching some bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel. [Esd #28] Sonnet: On waiting for a wind to cross the Bristol Channel from Devonshire to Wales. [Esd #29] To Harriet ("Harriet! thy kiss to my soul is dear") [Esd #30] Mary to the Sea-Wind [Esd #31] A retrospect of Times of Old [Esd #32] The Voyage A Fragment Devonshire-August 1812 [Esd #33] A Dialogue-1809 Supplement: Version in Hogg Manuscript, ca. 1810 [Esd #34] 1810 ("How eloquent are eyes!") Supplement: Version in Letter to Hogg, 18-19 June 1811 [Esd #35] 1810 ("Hopes that bud in youthful breasts") Supplement: Version in Letter to Hogg, 18-19 June 1811 [Esd #36] September 23, 1809 ("Moonbeam! leave the shadowy dale") Supplement: To the Moonbeam in Letter to Hogg, 17 May 1811 [Poems about Mary] Advertisement [Esd #37] To Mary I [Esd #38] To Mary II [Esd #39] To Mary III [Esd #40] To the Lover of Mary [Esd #41] 1810 ("Dares the Lama, most fleet") Supplement: Version in Letter to Hogg, 20 April 1811 [Esd #42] 1809 ("I will kneel at thine altar") [Esd #43] Fragment of a Poem, the original idea of which was suggested by the cowardly and infamous bombardment of Copenhagen Supplement: Version in Letter to Hogg, 11 January 1811 [Esd #44] 1809 On an Icicle that clung to the grass of a grave Supplement: Version in Letter to Hogg, 6 January 1811 [Esd #45] 1808 ("Cold are the Blasts") Supplement: Version in Hogg Manuscript, Late October or November 1810 [Esd #46] 1809 Henry and Louisa a Poem in two parts The Parting Part the First. Scene-England The Meeting Part Second [Esd #47] A Translation of The Marsellois Hymn Supplement: Stanza Included in Letter to Graham, ca. 19 June 1811 [Esd #48] Written in very early youth [Esd #49] Zeinab and Kathema [Esd #50] The Retrospect. Cwm Elan 1812 [Esd #51] The wandering Jew's soliloquy [Esd #52] To Ianthe. Oct Septr 1813 [Esd #53] Evening-to Harriet. Sep. 1813 [Esd #54] To Harriett ("Thy look of love") [Esd #55] "Full many a mind" [Esd #56] May 1813: To Harriet . . . . . . . . . [Esd #57] "Late was the night" [Esd #58] Febry 28th 1806- To St Irvyne Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: with Notes. To Harriett * * * * * [dedicatory poem] Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII Canto IX Notes. [Shelley's Notes to Queen Mab] Note 1 (I.242-43) Note 2 (I.252-53) Note 3 (IV.178-79) Note 4 (V.1-2) Note 5 (V.4-6) Note 6 (V.58) Note 7 (V.93-94) Note 8 (V.112-13) Note 9 (V.189) Note 10 (VI.45-46) Note 11 (VI.171-73) Note 12 (VI.198) Note 13 (VII.13) Note 14 (VII.67) Note 15 (VII.135-36) Note 16 (VIII.203-7) Note 17 (VIII.211-12) Commentaries The Esdaile Notebook Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: with Notes. Shelley's Notes to Queen Mab Historical Collations Introduction The Esdaile Notebook Shelley's Notes to Queen Mab Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: with Notes. Shelley's Notes to Queen Mab Appendixes Introduction A. Poetic Forms in The Esdaile Notebook B. Mary W. Shelley's "Note on Queen Mab" I. From the 1839 Edition of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley,Volume I. II. From the 1840 Revised Edition of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Index of Titles Index of First Lines
A scholarly delight. Romanticism on the Net Once it is completed, this will be the definitive critical edition of the complete poetry of P.B. Shelley that the scholarly community has been awaiting for such a long time. We can already say: it will have been worth the wait. -- Christoph Bode Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA)
