Writing to his publisher in 1813, Shelley
expressed the hope that two of his major works "should
form one volume"; nearly two centuries later, the second
volume of the Johns Hopkins edition of
The
Complete Poetry fulfills that wish for the
first time. This volume collects two important pieces:
Queen Mab and
The Esdaile
Notebook. Privately issued in 1813,
Queen Mab was perhaps Shelley's most
intellectually ambitious work, articulating his views of
science, politics, history, religion, society, and
individual human relations. Subtitled
A
Philosophical Poem: With Notes, it became his
most influential—and pirated—poem during much of the
nineteenth century, a favorite among reformers and
radicals.
The Esdaile Notebook, a
cycle of fifty-eight early poems, exhibits an
astonishing range of verse forms. Unpublished until
1964, this sequence is vital in understanding how the
poet mastered his craft.
As in the
acclaimed first volume, these works have been critically
edited by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. The poems
are presented as Shelley intended, with textual variants
included in footnotes. Following the poems are extensive
discussions of the circumstances of their composition
and the influences they reflect; their publication or
circulation by other means; their reception at the time
of publication and in the decades since; their
re-publication, both authorized and unauthorized; and
their place in Shelley's intellectual and aesthetic
development.