The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1Shelley, Percy Bysshe
General
The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
English poetry
In 1903 Mr. C.D. Locock published, in a quarto volume of seventy-five
pages, the fruits of a careful scrutiny of the Shelley manuscripts now
lodged in the Bodleian Library. Mr. Locock succeeded in recovering
several inedited fragments of verse and prose. Amongst the poems
chiefly concerned in the results of his "Examination" may be named
"Marenghi", "Prince Athanase", "The Witch of Atlas", "To Constantia",
the "Ode to Naples", and (last, not least) "Prometheus Unbound". Full
use has been made in this edition of Mr. Locock's collations, and the
fragments recovered and printed by him are included in the text.
Variants derived from the Bodleian manuscripts are marked "B." in the
footnotes.
On the state of the text generally, and the various quarters in which
it lies open to conjectural emendation, I cannot do better than quote
the following succinct and luminous account from a "Causerie" on the
Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, contributed by Dr.
Richard Garnett, C.B., to the columns of "The Speaker" of December 19,
1903:--
'From the textual point of view, Shelley's works may be divided into
three classes--those published in his lifetime under his own
direction; those also published in his lifetime, but in his absence
from the press; and those published after his death. The first class
includes "Queen Mab", "The Revolt of Islam", and "Alastor" with its
appendages, published in England before his final departure for the
continent; and "The Cenci" and "Adonais", printed under his own eye at
Leghorn and Pisa respectively. Except for some provoking but
corrigible misprints in "The Revolt of Islam" and one crucial passage
in "Alastor", these poems afford little material for conjectural
emendation; for the Alexandrines now and then left in the middle of
stanzas in "The Revolt of Islam" must remain untouched, as proceeding
not from the printer's carelessness but the author's. The second
class, poems printed during Shelley's lifetime, but not under his
immediate inspection, comprise "Prometheus Unbound" and "Rosalind and
Helen", together with the pieces which accompanied them,
"Epipsychidion", "Hellas", and "Swellfoot the Tyrant". The correction
of the most important of these, the "Prometheus", was the least
satisfactory. Shelley, though speaking plainly to the publisher,
rather hints than expresses his dissatisfaction when writing to
Gisborne, the corrector, but there is a pretty clear hint when on a
subsequent occasion he says to him, "I have received 'Hellas', which
is prettily printed, and with fewer mistakes than any poem I ever
published." This also was probably not without influence on his
determination to have "The Cenci" and "Adonais" printed in Italy...Of
the third class of Shelley's writings--those which were first
published after his death--sufficient facsimiles have been published
to prove that Trelawny's graphic description of the chaotic state of
most of them was really in no respect exaggerated...The difficulty is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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