Though W. M. Rossetti, R. Garnett, Mac-Carthy, and Dowden had earlier made
copies and published excerpts from Shelley's letters to Elizabeth
Hitchener, that correspondence, including his letter of ?16 January 1812
containing the early draft ofThe Devil's Walk, was first published
in full by T. J. Wise in 1890 (see De Ricci 105, 112). Thus the public's first
knowledge of The Devil's Walk came when Rossetti, alerted by someone
at the Public Record Office to the Shelley materials there, published
the text of the 1812 broadsheet and its accompanying letters in Fortnightly
Review for January 1871 (n.s., IX [XV of full sequence], no. xlix, 67-85).
H. B. Forman, after checking the text at the Public Record Office, included
The Devil's Walk in his edition of 1876-77 (IV, 371-77).
Though Rossetti accepted several of Forman's corrections in 1878 (III,
371-76), he retained much of his own revised punctuation and orthography, rather
than returning to that of 1812. Rossetti's most important innovation
was the addition of quotation marks around lines 45-79, which embody
his insight that these seditious lines were meant to be Satan's own words, thereby
allowing Shelley to evade prosecution by claiming that the attacks on
the Regent are presented as being from the lips of the Father of Lies.