The latest volume of the acclaimed and magisterial Hopkins Press edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley''s poetry, covering the years 1818 to early 1820, the first phase of Shelley''s Italian period.
"You talk Utopia," says the worldly Count Maddalo, reproaching the idealistic Julian in Julian and Maddalo. Inspired by conversations conducted on horseback near Venice between the two notorious exiled poets, Shelley and Byron, this poem was among the first of the masterpieces that Shelley wrote after moving with his family in March 1818 from England to post-Napoleonic Italy.
The fourth volume of the Hopkins Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley covers the years 1818–19 and part of 1820, when Britain was convulsed by popular agitation for the reform of Parliament and stifled by repressive laws against free speech. Among its other contents are The Cenci, an indictment of tyranny, domestic and political, probably the most actable of Romantic dramas; The Mask of Anarchy, the "greatest poem of political protest ever written in English" (too inflammatory to be published at the time); Peter Bell the Third, a brilliant satire on Wordsworth; the fiery sonnet "England in 1819"; an eclogue for women''s voices (Rosalind and Helen); playful, sophisticated songs ("Love''s Philosophy") and sad verses ("Stanzas, Written in dejection"). Shelley''s publications received slashing reviews from politically motivated critics, who attacked his character and principles but acknowledged his poetic gifts. He broadened his scope and composed the most politically engaged poems of his maturity. To quote a Victorian editor, he "ceased to be a subject of Time, and became a citizen of Eternity."
As in previous volumes, meticulously edited texts are accompanied by discussions of the poems'' composition, the influences they reflect, their publication, reception, and critical history, and detailed records of textual variants. Appendixes range from Mary Shelley''s editorial notes to jottings by Shelley drawn from a hitherto unrecognized source for The Cenci. Readers will find in volume four original research, fresh readings, new contexts, and discoveries—hallmarks of this acclaimed edition.
Volumes 5, 6, and 8 are in preparation.
An indispensable reference work for all who study Shelley.
—praise for volume 1, Studies in Romanticism
Rigorously, enthusiastically, and innovatively edited, this volume has brought excitement and zest to my Shelley-reading life.
—praise for volume 7, Australian Book Review
Like the previous [The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley] editions, Crook''s latest contribution is both indispensable and delightful, a resource to be prized not only for its careful and authoritative presentation of Shelley''s poetry but also for the incisive commentary and contextualization Crook provides throughout....the twin hearts of this edition are, of course, "Texts" and "Commentaries," the former providing the now-definitive texts of each work and the latter a collection of acute analyses that represents the lion''s share of this volume''s thousand pages. In a slight but useful departure from the earlier volumes in this series, each commentary opens with a headnote that provides item-specific notes as well as information about the text''s genesis and transmission and critical history.
—praise for volume 7, Romantic Circles
A scholarly delight.
—praise for volume 2, Romanticism on the Net
The detail and precision of the textual editing here are exemplary: the publication history of the poems, along with the tangled manuscript evidence behind and alongside the original volumes, is dealt with clearly and (when need be) decisively, to produce a hugely authoritative—as well as huge—edition.
—Times Literary Supplement
Quite 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.
—praise for volume 7, Studies in English Literature
In gathering together all his earliest pieces, including some that have been unavailable in standard editions of the collected poetry, Donald Reiman and Neil Fraistat''s meticulously edited volume brings out the aims Shelley had for his verse, and the effects he sought, which remained surprisingly uniform.
—praise for volume 1, London Review of Books
With volume seven raising the bar once again, this series is the gold standard for Shelley scholarship. Its expert and illuminating readings are peerless.
—praise for volume 7, The Coleridge Bulletin
CPPBS 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.
—praise for volume 7, European Romantic Review
This outstanding installment of an epoch-making edition of Shelley''s verse will transform the opportunities afforded to emerging Shelley scholars.
—praise for volume 7, Review of English Studies
What makes this volume so exceptional (like its predecessors) is not only the state-of-the-art editing, but also the knowledgeable commentaries that give information on the poems'' composition, possible sources and influences, publication, and most welcome, their reception history. . . . This gigantic editorial project cannot be praised highly enough.
—praise for volume 3, Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanistik
A monumental edition—the Shelley edition for our time.
—praise for volume 1, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
Will almost certainly be the standard in Shelley scholarship.
—praise for volume 1, Studies in English Literature
[I]t is tremendously exciting to have access to a resource that provides such an intimate look into the poet''s world and his creative process.
—praise for volume 3, The Year''s Work in English Studies
If ever an edition deserved the chimerical epithet ''definitive'' this is it. A more comprehensive collation of relevant materials, or a more sensitive, sensible, and reader-friendly presentation of evidence, is inconceivable. All Shelleyans owe Reiman and Fraistat a debt of gratitude. The edition this volume inaugurates will be an essential acquisition for academic libraries and should become the standard scholarly reference for all citations of Shelley''s poems.
—praise for volume 1, The Wordsworth Circle
This edition will undoubtedly be indispensable for the serious study of Shelley''s poetry.
—praise for volume 1, Review of English Studies
The detail and precision of the textual editing here are exemplary: the publication history of the poems, along with the tangled manuscript evidence behind and alongside the original volumes, is dealt with clearly and (when need be) decisively, to produce a hugely authoritative—as well as huge—edition.
—Peter McDonald, praise for volume 3, Times Literary Supplement
This latest installment of The Complete Poetry is nothing less than a landmark in Shelley studies: comprehensive and reliable, necessary and illuminating.
—praise for volume 3, Keats-Shelley Journal
[T]his volume is a triumph, it is breathtaking, it is monumental, it is a summa.
—praise for volume 7, Byron Journal
Exciting 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.
—praise for volume 7, Keats-Shelley Review
These youthful poems prove that Shelley''s enthusiasm for political solutions to moral problems was neither intellectual fakery nor aristocratic affection.
—praise for volume 1, Sewanee Review
This is a critical volume of Shelley''s works for the twenty-first century—in short, a scholarly masterpiece. No academic library should be without it.
—praise for volume 3, Choice
To call this edition magisterial is to fall back on too lax a term of praise: it is rather a monument of precise, assured erudition in total command of the poems and almost two centuries of commentary on them, an awesome achievement that as it unfolds will replace all previous texts of Shelley''s poetry as well as the whole of their contexts. I cannot imagine it being done by anyone else—or, for that matter, better.
—Stuart Curran, University of Pennsylvania, praise for volume 1
The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a much needed work and Reiman and Fraistat are the best possible people to have done it. The research, knowledge, experience, and general thoughtfulness that have gone into the project are truly impressive. It will be a landmark event of Shelley scholarship.
—Jack Stillinger, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, praise for volume 1
Donald Reiman and Neil Fraistat bring to their new edition an unrivaled knowledge of the textual evidence and a superb grasp of the important historical and critical issues. Their presentation of and commentary on the poetry Shelley produced up through his elopement with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in July 1814 is clarifying and revealing in itself and encourages the highest possible expectations for the volumes to follow. Their editorial principles, centered around the objective of offering critical redactions of single versions of all the poems arranged chronologically in the order in which Shelley released these versions to a particular public, are scrupulously conceived and meticulously applied. Scholars, students, and general readers of Shelley''s poetry have reason to celebrate.
—William Keach, Brown University, praise for volume 1
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