The Poems of Shelley: Volume Six

Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822) was one of the major poets of the English Romantic period. This is the final volume of a six-volume edition of The Poems of Shelley, which aims to present all of Shelleys poems in chronological order and with full annotation. Date and circumstances of composition are provided for each poem and all manuscript and printed sources relevant to establishing an authoritative text are freshly examined and assessed. Headnotes and footnotes furnish the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary to an informed reading of Shelleys varied and allusive verse. Most of the poems in the present volume were composed between late January 1822 and Shelleys death on 8 July 1822. These include the lyrics to Jane Williams, Fragments of an Unfinished Drama and The Triumph of Life as well as translations from Goethes Faust (1822) and Calderns El mgico prodigioso. The appendices include editions of Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things (1811), a poem made publicly accessible by the Bodleian Libraries in 2015 for the first time since its publication, and translations by Shelley from Goethes Faust (1815), Aeschylus Prometheus Bound (1817) and Homers Odyssey (probably 1817). In addition to accompanying commentaries, there are extensive bibliographies to the poems, a chronological table of Shelleys life and publications, and indexes to titles and first lines. Now completed, this is the most comprehensive edition of Shelleys poetry available to students and scholars.