The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley

1. The Esdaile Notebook
2. Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: With Notes.
3. Appendix: Mary W. Shelley's Prefaces and Notes

Brief Description of Edition:

The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley is intended to provide critically edited texts of all the poems that Shelley released for circulation, accompanied in Supplements by drafts and verse fragments pertaining to these public poems. Following these will be diplomatic texts of all Shelley's known poetry left incomplete or unpolished at his death.

The released poems will usually appear in the order in which Shelley transmitted them to their intended audiences: each finished poem or poetic volume will appear in a sequence based on the date that Shelley either submitted that version to a press for publication or (in the case of some poems containing sentiments reserved for his intimate circle) prepared a finished copy for perusal by the person(s) in his intended audience. These poems are being edited critically to represent, as accurately as the surviving evidence permits, the text that Shelley intended his first reader(s) to see at the time he released them. We try to correct errata in Shelley's manuscripts and first editions, whether or not these were later noted by the poet himself, as well as attempt to uncover and extirpate errors of the press and later editorial emendations that reflect the judgment of later times and other consciousnesses, including Mary W. Shelley's.

Volume One

In press; due Spring 1999

1. Original Poetry; By Victor and Cazire.

• "Here I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink,"
• To Miss -------- From Miss --------
• Song. ["Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,"]
• Song. ["Come _______ sweet is the hour,"]
• Song. Despair.
• Song. Sorrow.
• Song. Hope.
• Song. Translated from the Italian.
• Song. Translated from the German.
• The Irishman's Song.
• Song. ["Fierce roars the midnight storm,"]
• Song: To ----- ["Ah! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain,"]
• Song: To ----- ["Stern, stern is the voice of fate's fearfull command,"]
• Saint Edmond's Eve.
• Revenge.
• Ghasta; Or, the Avenging Demon!!!
• Fragment, Or the Triumph of Conscience.

2. The Wandering Jew; or, the Victim of the Eternal Avenger.

3. Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of that Noted Female who Attempted the Life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor.

• Advertisement.
• "Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurl'd"
• Fragment. Supposed to be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Cordé.
• Despair.
• Fragment. ["Yes! all is past­swift time has fled away,"]
• The Spectral Horseman.
• Melody to a Scene of Former Times.

4. Poems from St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance.

• "'T was dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling"
• "Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling"
• Ballad. ["The death-bell beats!­"]
• Song. ["How swiftly through heaven's wide expanse"]
• Song. ["How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner,"]
• Song. ["Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary,"]

5. The Devil's Walk

6. Ten Early Poems (1809-1814)

• "A Cat in distress"
• "How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse"
• "Oh wretched mortal hard thy fate"
• To Mary who died in this opinion
• "Why is it said thou canst but live"
• "As you will see I wrote to you" (1st Letter to E. F. Graham)
• "Dear dear dear dear dear dear Græme!" (2nd Letter to E. F. Graham)
• "Sweet star! which gleaming oer the darksome scene"
• "Bear witness Erin! when thine injured isle"
• "Thy dewy looks sink in my breast"

Appendix: Latin School Exercises, Prose Treated As Poems, Lost Works, Dubia, and Misattributions

• Latin School Exercises
  • Epitaphium. [Latin Version of Epitaph in Gray's Elegy.] (ca. 1808-9).
  • In Horologium
• Prose Treated as Poems
  • "The Ocean rolls between us"
  • "Oh Ireland"
• Lost Works
  • Satirical Poem on "L'infame"
  • Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things
  • On a Fête at Carlton House
  • Essay on War
  • God Save the King
• Dubia
  • Poems in the Oxford University and City Herald
    • Ode to the Breath of Summer
    • The Grape: From the Greek Anthologia
    • Epigram: "We that were wont . . ."
    • Translation of an Epigram of Vincent Bourne's
    • Two Epigrams From the Greek Anthology: "On Old Age" and "Venus and the Muses"
  • Unattributed epigraphs to St. Irvyne
  • Sadak the Wanderer. A Fragment
• Misattributions
  • "The Revenge"
  • Lines Addressed to His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, on His Being Appointed Regent
  • The Modern Minerva; or, the Bat's Seminary for Young Ladies. A Satire on Female Education. By Queen Mab
  • Anecdotes of Father Murdo
  • To the Queen of My Heart

  Volume Two

  1. The Esdaile Notebook.

  • To Harriet ["Whose is the love that gleaming thro' the world"]
  • A sabbath Walk
  • The Crisis
  • Passion
  • To Harriet ["Never, O never, shall yonder Sun"]
  • Falshood and Vice: a Dialogue
  • 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
  • To November
  • Written on a beautiful day in Spring
  • On leaving London for Wales.
  • A winter's day
  • To Liberty
  • On Robert Emmet's tomb
  • A Tale of Society as it is: from facts. 1811
  • The solitary. 1810
  • The Monarch's funeral: An anticipation. 1810
  • To the Republicans of North America
  • Written at Cwm Ellan. 1811
  • To Death ["Death, where is thy victory!"]
  • "Dark Spirit of the desart rude"
  • "The pale, the cold and the moony smile"
  • "Death-spurning rocks! here have ye towered since Time"
  • The Tombs
  • To Harriet ["It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven"]
  • Sonnet. To Harriet on her birth day. August 1, 1812
  • Sonnet. To a balloon, laden with Knowledge
  • Sonnet. On launching some bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel.
  • Sonnet. On waiting for a wind to cross the Bristol Channel from Devonshire to Wales.
  • To Harriet ["Harriet! thy kiss to my soul is dear;"]
  • Mary to the Sea-Wind
  • A retrospect of Times of Old
  • The Voyage. A Fragment. Devonshire­August 1812
  • A Dialogue. 1809
  • "How eloquent are eyes!" 1810
  • "Hopes that bud in youthful breasts" 1810
  • To the Moonbeam. September 23. 1809
  • Poems to Mary
    • Advertisement
    • November 1810. To Mary I
    • To Mary II
    • To Mary III
    • To the Lover of Mary
  • "Dares the Lama, most fleet of the Sons of the Wind," 1810
  • "I will kneel at thine altar, will crown thee with bays" 1809
  • Fragment of a Poem the original idea of which was suggested by the cowardly and infamous bombardment of Copenhagen
  • On an Icicle that clung to the grass of a grave. 1809
  • "Cold are the blasts when December is howling" 1808
  • Henry and Louisa. a Poem in two parts. 1809
  • A Translation of The Marsellois Hymn
  • Written in very early youth
  • Zeinab and Kathema
  • The Retrospect. Cwm Elan 1812
  • The wandering Jew's soliloquy
  • To Ianthe. Sept.r 1813
  • Evening-to Harriet. Sep. 1813
  • To Harriett ["Thy look of love has power to calm"]
  • "Full many a mind with radiant genius fraught"
  • To Harriet. May 1813 ["Oh Harriet, love like mine that glows,"]
  • "Late was the night, the moon shone bright;"
  • To St Irvyne. Febry 28th 1805

  2. Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: With Notes.

  • To Harriet **** ["Whose is the love that gleaming through the world,"]
  • Shelley's Notes to Queen Mab -- Including poems, "Falshood and Vice" and "Dark flood of time!"

  Appendix: Prefaces and Notes in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Editions.

  • Preface, Posthumous Poems (1824)
  • Preface, 1839.
  • Postscript, 1840.
  • Note, Queen Mab