[iii] A note, probably in Richard Garnett’s hand, enclosed in a MS box with the two notebooks in Lord Abinger’s collection describes them as of Italian make with “slanting head bands, inserted through the covers.” Professor Lewis Patton’s list of the contents of the microfilms in the Duke University Library (_Library Notes_, No. 27, April, 1953) describes them as vellum bound, the back cover of the _Mathilda_ notebook being missing. Lord Abinger’s notebooks are on Reel 11. The Bodleian notebook is catalogued as MSS. Shelley d. 1, the Shelley-Rolls fragments as MSS. Shelley adds c. 5. [iv] See note 83 to _Mathilda_, page 89. [v] See _Posthumous Works of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ (4 vols., London, 1798), IV, 97-155. [vi] See _Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams ... Their Journals and Letters_, ed. by Frederick L. Jones (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [1951]), p. 27. [vii] See Thomas Medwin, _The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley_, revised, with introduction and notes by H. Buxton Forman (London, 1913), p. 252. [viii] _Journal_, pp. 159, 160. [ix] _Maria Gisborne, etc._, pp. 43-44. [x] _Letters_, I, 182. [xi] _Ibid._, I, 224. [xii] See White, _Shelley_, II, 40-56. [xiii] See _Letters_, II, 88, and note 23 to _Mathilda_. [xiv] See _Shelley and Mary_ (4 vols. Privately printed [for Sir Percy and Lady Shelley], 1882), II, 338A. [xv] See Mrs. Julian Marshall, _The Life and Letters of Mary W. Shelley_ (2 vols. London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1889), I, 255. [xvi] Julian _Works_, X, 69. [xvii] _Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal_ (3 vols., Nos. 63, 71, and 96 of the Rev. Dionysius Lardner’s _Cabinet Cyclopaedia_, London, 1835-1837), II, 291-292. [xviii] The most significant revisions are considered in detail in the notes. The text of the opening of _The Fields of Fancy_, containing the fanciful framework of the story, later discarded, is printed after the text of _Mathilda_. MATHILDA[1] CHAP. I Florence. Nov. 9th 1819 It is only four o’clock; but it is winter and the sun has already set: there are no clouds in the clear, frosty sky to reflect its slant beams, but the air itself is tinged with a slight roseate colour which is again reflected on the snow that covers the ground. I live in a lone cottage on a solitary, wide heath: no voice of life reaches me. I see the desolate plain covered with white, save a few black patches that the noonday sun has made at the top of those sharp pointed hillocks from which the snow, sliding as it fell, lay thinner than on the plain ground: a few birds are pecking at the hard ice that covers the pools--for the frost has been of long continuance.[2]