The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Volume I.

Shelley, P.B. ; Murray, E.B.

ISBN 10: 0198127480 / ISBN 13: 9780198127482

Published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, first edition, 1993, 1993

About this Item

Cloth, gilt cover-titles in frame, 8vo, 23 cm, lii, 592 pp, facs, map. From the introductory note: "This edition contains all of Shelley s prose writings except the early Gothic novels and the notes to Queen Mab and to Hellas. [Note- this Volume I contains the prose written before Shelley left England in early March, 1818 : material written later will fall within Volume II]. Significant among several items appearing here for the first time in any collected edition of Shelley s prose works are the Declaration in Chancery, On Zionism, On the Improvvissatore Sgricci, A Definition of Atheism, the Cry of War to the Greeks, and the fragment On Contraception. While An Answer to Leslie s 'A Short and Easy Method with the Deists has been previously published in disparate parts in collected editions, its reintegrated form, like most of the above works, has appeared only in periodical publication. On the other hand, it has seemed expedient to print the Letters Written in Geneva under that title, rather than continue to subsume them under the general head of the History of a Six Weeks Tour. The Letter on Richard Carlisle has been previously published only among the poet s letters, as has the fragment On Learning Languages', the short draft here entitled A Faustian Note associated with the latter is previously unpublished." From a review by Stuart Curran in the Keats-Shelley Journal ".quite simply, although it may seem unimaginable, this is an authoritative text. The expertise that informs this volume is as good as one gets: assured of all grounds, everywhere profiting from the skills of modem coworkers on the manuscripts, unobtrusively in charge of every detail of textual, historical, or critical complexity, and representing them all with an exemplary clarity and fidelity to fact. And where facts cannot be unambiguously ascertained, Murray has had the good sense to eschew the practices of almost all his predecessors and say so." Very Good.

Seller Inventory # ABE-31718

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Volume I.
• Publisher: Clarendon Press, Oxford, first edition, 1993
• Publication Date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0198127480
• ISBN 13: 9780198127482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • English Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Volume I of this critical edition of Shelley's prose--the first since the Julian Edition (1926-30)--provides authoritative texts of The Necessity of Atheism, the Irish pamphlets, the vegetarian essays, The Assassins, A Refutation of Deism, On Christianity, the "Hermit of Marlow" political writings, and several reviews. The texts, which are based on first editions and manuscripts, were all written between Shelley's last months in Oxford in 1811 and his departure for Italy in 1818. They are conservatively edited, with all changes from copy-text noted, along with revisions, deletions, and a historical collation of significant earlier editions. The Introduction provides a description of these editions, a full statement of editorial principles and practice, and an account of the relevant political and social context as Shelley knew and wrote about it. The commentary pays particular attention to the problems of dating the manuscripts, and contains more detailed copy-text descriptions, more thorough accounts of provenance, and more information on sources and allusions than any previous edition of the works. Location lists of rare first editions are comparably more complete than those provided in earlier bibliographies.

About the Author

E. B. Murray is at University of Missouri at St Louis.