Description
Book SynopsisThis new volume of JHU Press's landmark Shelley edition contains posthumous poems edited from original manuscripts. The world will surely one day feel what it has lost, wrote Mary Shelley after Percy Bysshe Shelley's premature death in July 1822. Determined to hasten that day, she recovered his unpublished and uncollected poems and sifted through his surviving notebooks and papers. In Genoa during the winter of 182223, she painstakingly transcribed poetry interlined and broken into fragments, so that the sense could only be deciphered and joined by guesses. Blasphemy and sedition laws prevented her from including her husband's most outspoken radical works, but the resulting volume, Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824), was a magnificent display of Shelley's versatility and craftsmanship between 1816 and 1822. Few such volumes have made more difference to an author's reputation. The seventh volume of the acclaimed Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley extracts from Posthu
Trade ReviewRigorously, enthusiastically, and innovatively edited, this volume has brought excitement and zest to my Shelley-reading life.
—
Australian Book ReviewWith volume seven raising the bar once again, this series is the gold standard for Shelley scholarship. Its expert and illuminating readings are peerless.
—Madeleine Callaghan, University of Sheffield,
The Coleridge BulletinCPPBS 7 is set to become a model for editing modern poetry manuscripts. It strikes a difficult balance between philological rigor and scholarly comprehensiveness on the one hand and readability and usability at different levels of expertise on the other. Textual critics and students of Shelley's poetry will find it equally indispensable, but it will also serve as an important reference work for Mary Shelley scholars.
—Valentina Varinelli, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy,
European Romantic ReviewThis outstanding installment of an epoch-making edition of Shelley's verse will transform the opportunities afforded to emerging Shelley scholars.
—Anthony Howe, Birmingham City University, UK,
Review of English Studies...this volume is a triumph, it is breathtaking, it is monumental, it is a summa.
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Byron JournalQuite possibly the most significant publication among this year's Romantic studies,
The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume Seven, edited by Nora Crook, is a magisterial scholarly edition of Shelley's posthumously published poems, including "The Triumph of Life" and many other fragments that Mary Shelley first edited, including some of his most beloved shorter lyrics. Part of the ongoing editorial project now directed by Crook and Neil Fraistat, Volume Seven arrives as a stunning and indispensable book, modeling both textual stewardship and critical acumen.
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Studies in English Literature 1500-1900Exciting revelations, new connections, and editorial discoveries abound in volume seven, which is testament to the brilliance of one of our greatest scholars and editors of the Shelleys, Nora Crook.
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Keats-Shelley ReviewTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Editorial Overview
Abbreviations
TEXTS
From the Triumph MS and Posthumous Poems (Opening Section)
The Triumph of Life
Lyric Fragments from the Triumph MS
"An Unfinished Drama"
From Posthumous Poems: Miscellaneous Poems
"On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci"
"The Fugitives"
"The sun is set, the swallows are asleep"
Lyrics for Mary W. Shelley's Proserpine and Midas
"Arethusa"
"Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth"
"Song of Apollo"
"Song of Pan"
Autumn A Dirge
"Our boat is asleep in Serchio's stream"
The Zucca
The good die first— The Two Spirits. An Allegory
"Tomorrow"
"They die—the dead return not"
"O World, O Life, O Time"
"Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me"
"I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden—"
"My lost William, thou in whom"
"A Portal as of shadowy adamant"
"The flower that smiles today"
From the Arabic—imitation
"One word is too often profaned"
"Music"
"Death is here, and death is there"
"When passion's trance is overpast"
"Listen, listen, Mary mine—"
"O Mary dear, that you were here"
"Wilt thou forget the happy hours"
"The fiery mountains answer each other"
"Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed"
"There was a little lawny islet"
"Rose leaves, when the rose is dead"
"Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years"
"Tell me, Star, whose wings of light"
"Rough wind that moanest loud"
"Far, far away, O ye"
Jan. 1. 1821
From Posthumous Poems: Fragments
"Ginevra"
The Historical Tragedy of Charles the First
"Mazenghi"
"The Woodman and the Nightingale"
"Art thou pale for weariness"
"I loved—alas, our life is love"
"And like a dying lady lean and pale"
"These are two friends whose lives were undivided"
COMMENTARIES
From the Triumph MS and Posthumous Poems (Opening Section)
The Triumph of Life
Lyric Fragments from the Triumph MS
"An Unfinished Drama"
From Posthumous Poems: Miscellaneous Poems
"On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci"
"The Fugitives"
"The sun is set, the swallows are asleep"
Lyrics for Mary W. Shelley's Proserpine and Midas
Autumn A Dirge (and Supplements)
"Our boat is asleep in Serchio's stream"
The Zucca
The good die first— The Two Spirits. An Allegory
"Tomorrow"
"They die—the dead return not"
"O World, O Life, O Time"
"Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me"
"I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden—"
"My lost William, thou in whom"
"A Portal as of shadowy adamant"
"The flower that smiles today"
From the Arabic—imitation
"One word is too often profaned"
"Music"
"Death is here, and death is there"
"When passion's trance is overpast"
"Listen, listen, Mary mine"
"O Mary dear, that you were here"
"Wilt thou forget the happy hours"
"The fiery mountains answer each other"
"Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed"
"There was a little lawny islet"
"Rose leaves, when the rose is dead"
"Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years"
"Tell me, Star, whose wings of light"
"Rough wind that moanest loud"
"Far, far away, O ye"
Jan. 1. 1821
From Posthumous Poems: Fragments
"Ginevra"
The Historical Tragedy of Charles the First
"Mazenghi"
"The Woodman and the Nightingale"
"Art thou pale for weariness"
"I loved—alas, our life is love"
"And like a dying lady lean and pale"
"These are two friends whose lives were undivided"
HISTORICAL COLLATIONS
From the Triumph MS and Posthumous Poems (Opening Section)
From Posthumous Poems: Miscellaneous Poems
From Posthumous Poems: Fragments
APPENDIXES
A. Contents of Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824), Together with a List of Manuscript Sources of Items in This Volume
B. Mary W. Shelley's Preface to Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824)
C. Source for "Ginevra": Marco Lastri, L'osservatore fiorentino
D. Charles the First: Ancillary Material
I. PBS's Reading Notes
II. Sketch of Acts I and II
III. Jottings (Preliminary)
Contributors
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines
