Volume Four in the esteemed The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley collection contains some of the works that established Shelley’s enduring reputation: Julian and Maddalo, in which he “ceased to be a subject of Time, and became a citizen of Eternity,” according to a Victorian editor; The Cenci, an indictment of tyranny, domestic and political, the most actable drama in English of the Romantic period; The Mask of Anarchy, the “greatest poem of political protest ever written in English”; Peter Bell the Third, a brilliant satire on Wordsworth; the fiery sonnet “England in 1819”; an eclogue for women’s voices (Rosalind and Helen); playful, sophisticated songs like “Love’s Philosophy” and sad verses like “Stanzas, Written in dejection.” During these turbulent years Shelley broadened his scope, experimenting with a variety of forms and genres and composing the most openly politically engaged poems of his maturity. As in previous volumes, extensive original research and discussions of the poems’ composition, influences, publication, circulation, reception, and critical history accompany detailed records of textual variants. Appendixes range from Mary Shelley’s editorial notes to jottings by Shelley taken from a hitherto unrecognized second source for The Cenci. Readers will find in Volume Four fresh readings, new contexts, and discoveries—hallmarks of the Hopkins Press The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
