Product Description
But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume contains one of the fullest, and certainly the most accurately edited, collections of Shelley's poetry and prose available.

This Second Edition is based on the authoritative texts established by Reiman and Fraistat for their scholarly edition, The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley.Each poetry and prose selection has been reedited from the ground up. Headnotes detailing the textual history of Shelley's major works have been revised and expanded, and many new and revised footnotes are included.

The years since 1977—when the First Edition appeared—have witnessed a renaissance in Shelley studies greater than any since 1870-92.All 23 critical selections are new, and include analysis ofShelley's manuscripts and other textual sources for his writing as well as interpretations.

A Chronology, rigorously updated Selected Bibliography, and Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.

About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

"Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass/Stains the white radiance of eternity."
This is the best edition of Shelley's poetry (though the new Oxford is quite good). Shelley is our most abstract and philosophical poet: his subjects are color, light, hope, love, time, truth, image, reality. He seems to write on a constant a strain of magnificence, so that stunning lines, like the one I quoted above, litter every page. Though he is undeniably beautiful, he is a difficult poet. His apparent sweetness, his tendency to write about beautiful objects of transcendence, can sometimes mask the darker elements of his thinking. As such, there are some excellent pieces in here by Earl Wasserman, Harold Bloom, William Keach and others to help get a sense of Shelley's idealist universe.

A Simple List
This text is a great one, as are all of the Norton anthologies that I have bought over the years.The works it contains are as follows:

Poetry:
"Queen Mab"
"Alastor"
"Stanzas -- April, 1814"
"Mutability"
"To Wordsworth"
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"
"Mont Blanc"
Excerpts from "Laon and Cynthia"
"To Constantia"
"Ozymandias"
"Lines written among the Euganean Hills"
"Julian and Maddalo"
"Stanza written in Dejection"
"The Two Spirits -- an Allegory"
"The Cenci"
"Prometheus Unbound"
"The Sensitive-Plant"
"Ode to Heaven"
"Ode to the West Wind"
"The Cloud"
"To a Sky-Lark"
"Ode to Liberty"
"The Mask of Anarchy"
"England in 1819"
"Sonnet: To the Republic of Benevento"
"Sonnet ('Lift not the painted veil')"
"Sonnet ('Ye hasten to the grave!')"
"Letter to Maria Gisborne"
"Peter Bell the Third"
"The Witch of Atlas"
"Song of Apollo"
"Song of Pan"
"Epipsychidion"
"Adonais"
"Hellas"
"Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon"
"The Indian Girl's Song"
"Song ('Rarely, rarely comest thou')"
"The Flower that Smiles Today"
"Memory"
"To ------ ('Music, when soft voices die')"
"When Passion's Trance Is Overpast"
"To Jane.The Invitation"
"To Jane.The Recollection"
"One Word Is Too Often Profaned"
"The Serpent Is Shut Out from Paradise Lost"
"With a Guitar.To Jane."
"To Jane ('The keen stars were twinkling')"
"Lines written in the Bay of Lerici
"The Triumph of Life"

Prose:
"On Love"
"On Life"
"A Defence of Poetry"

As per Norton tradition, most of the major works and some of the lesser ones have an introduction before them in which historical context is given, major themes explained, and important images or ideas are revealed.This collection also contains twenty-two critical essays by scholars such as Harold Bloom, Michael O'Neill, and Susan J. Wolfson, on Shelley and his life and art, including eleven work-specific critical essays.
What a great collection!

A fiery Romantic
Shelley is a figure of fire; whenever I read any of his works I sense a tremendous energy and vitality, and a great love of life in all its forms.

Shelley lived by the ideals he set out in his poetry and also his radical politics; complete freedom and the embracement of individual choice, and the rejection of all forms of authority which strangled creativity and the human spirit.At the level of his art, this led to Shelley becoming one of the finest poets of the Romantic era and of the English language for all time, but unfortunately in his personal life and his financial situations, disaster.

Always a restless spirit, Shelley was always on the move; he composed some of his finest poems while he lived for a time in Italy.His work covers a wide range from political pamphlets and criticism (such as his essay 'A defence of poetry') to plays and poems of various types and lengths.His most brilliant poems include an Ode to Keats, 'Prometheus Unbound', and 'Queen Mab', a scathing attack on conventional religious values and political tyranny.

One of Shelley's most attractive aspects is his deep love for and sensitivity to the beauty of nature.Shelley was well read in natural sciences and Astronomy and many of his finest poems (including one addressed to a thunderstorm) capture in vivid colour and detail the changes and endless activity of nature.

Unfortunately Shelley died at the tragically young age of 29 in a boating accident related to a storm, caused to a large degree by his own foolhardy nature.But perhaps there was no more fitting an end to such a fiery, unstable and poetically creative man as him.

This edition contains a good sample of his works as well as several critical essays on Shelley and his work.

A Hero

Percy Bysshe Shelley is undoubtedly one of the double handful of master poets of the English language. He's something more to many of us, a figure of great charisma and daring who spent his life in relentless search of a better way to be than what we're perpetually settling for, politically, erotically, personally. This quest took him into several flavors of exile, and into darker places within; early on he abandoned belief and near the end, some say, abandoned hope. But he wrote what it was like all the way through, and what it should be like, and why writing what it should be like is crucial. He searched always for the road forward, refusing the easy lie of naming the ground beneath his feet that road. Not that he was what we would call an existentialist: his vision of what might prove possible in life marries all the little-but-infinite scenes of love, discovery, and sublimity he'd experienced and never forgotten, and was always at work recasting in stronger and surer words and images.

His most important writings are mid-length and longer pieces. This is something of a paradox as all agree he is anyone's equal as a lyric poet. I recommend his crazy, brilliant early poem "Alastor" as a beginning point. It sketches out the quest he never left off from and gives a heavy, tonic dose of poetry as he conceived it: a stripping off of fear, remorse and all other artificial limits, including those of our very senses, and a dive into the furious streaming colliding fires of the true world to find what's lost there. It's a bit like the visionary journey the astronaut takes near the end of the film 2001. Without the fetus.

This is a great selection, omitting little of importance. The first edition carried all the same poems, but a mostly different set of critical essays. A slightly fuller selection is in print in the Oxford World's Classics series, with less critical apparatus for those who like to go it alone. Shelley's works have a tangled textual history, so I'd advise going with these professional selections and no other (two editions of Shelley's complete works are finally in progress, I'm happy to say).

Pure Intellectual Beauty
Shelley is the wild child of English poetry and his determined opposition to tyranny produced a huge variety of poetry, ranging from the rending lament of Keats in Adonais, to the defiant and taut sonnet Ozymandias. Hissingle greatest work, however, is Prometheus Unbound, which a vast gothicruin of neat poetry. One shot of it and you'll wonder why a) all the nice,obvious prosy bits seem to have been left out andb) why exactly you loveit, and him, so much. Like a cross between a vision of God and alobotomy.

It's strange, but he means it and the grand sweep of the poemand its rebirth of humanity (I did say this isn't kitchen sink drama) is asdistinctive an experience as reading Milton for the first time or the firsttime you read a love letter in the bath. Holding an electric fire.

Thereare many other poems which should be headline news, such as Hymn toIntellectual Beauty, Mont Blanc, Mutability and Ode to the West Wind, butthis edition also has the advantage of including the Defence of Poetrywhich is the most rhapsodic and emotive arguments you'll ever have thepleasure to be swept away by. For a second you want to believe thebeautiful nonsense that 'poets are the unackowledged legislators of theworld'. Shelley pulls no punches in prose because he hasn't pulled any inpoetry. He believes in the prophetic importance of his role and is electricenough to almost make us belive him.

This is the best student edition ofShelley's works in print. Not according to me, but to a Professor inRomantic Poetry at Oxford University.Not a bad recommendation!

Theessays in this volume are generally helpful and explain the structures ofthe poems where useful. They are also refreshingly short. Shelley is apoet who has run close to obscurity due to reams of bad criticism (byfigures as famous as Matthew Arnold and FR Leavis) who have mistaken hisextraordinary originality for weakness. An easy mistake, I'm sure.Shelley's poetry is all in the mind, and the lack of concreteness can befrustrating. A bit like flying can be so much more tiresome than walking. ... Read more

Product Description
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a Romantic poet of radical imaginings, living in an age of change.His tempestuous life and friendship with Byron, and his tragically early death, at times threatened to overwhelm his legacy as a poet, but today his standing as one of the foremost English authors is assured.

This freshly edited collection--the fullest one-volume selection in English--includes all but one of the longer poems, from Queen Mab onwards, in their entirety. Only Laon and Cythna is excerpted, in a generous selection.As well as works such asPrometheus Unbound, The Mask of Anarchy, and Adonais, the volume includes a wide range of Shelley's shorter poems and much of his major prose, including A Defence of Poetryand almost all of A Philosophical View of Reform. Shelley emerges from these pages as a passionate and eloquent opponent of tyranny and a champion of human possibility. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fantastic collecion for Shelley enthusiasts
This is a comprehensive collection of Shelley's works including plays, poems and other works. Recommend for the Shelley enthusiast, casual Shelley fan and anyone majoring in English (BA, MA, PhD...) very useful resource for myself, classmates and my professors (I am an English MA student myself.) Includes both well known works (Promethius Unbound, Ozymandias etc etc..) as well as some perhaps lesser known works (Mask of Anarchy...)
Very nice collection for any personal library, especially for the price.

Haha!I own this and you don't yet!
OK, maybe that was a bit mean-spirited, but it is just to invoke you into buying this book.It is fantastic.Percy Shelley is a genius.Very tongue in cheek, still wwwaaaaayyyyy romantic-y, quite deacadant.Buy it. You have to. ... Read more

Product Description
Shelley's work has been criticized for its didacticism and undisciplined emotionalism. But essentially, he was a poet of ideas and in his search for truth and original human perfection, Shelley was inspired as much by the Greek poets and philosophers, particularly Plato, as by the radicalism of his own age. Above all, his great gift was his lyricism and his verse comes as near to music as poetry can. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Great Sample of Shelley's Poems
Note: I made some immature Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books that attempted to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews almost as fast as they are posted.

I must have really burned him or her because I've deleted this review and re-posted it and within an hour, I had a "not helpful" vote. Give me a break. That person's faith must be very fragile, indeed. Oh, well.

I'm trying to be "helpful," so your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks, and I hope you find some enjoyable lines (below). Thanks.

This collection has many of the poems we all love. It's not an exhaustive collection, but it's worth buying for Quigly's introductory essay, and as she said, "Shelley lives on outside his verse, and continues still to attract or repel, as he did when he was alive." How true.

In "Astor; or the Spirit of Solitude," Shelley left a perfect, though probably unintended,description of himself.

"The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius."

And of our place in history, it gives us pause to read Shelley's "Ozymandias."

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said; Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the and,
Half sunk, a shattered visages lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
That lone and level sands stretch far away.

And I must quote a few lines from the "Skylark."

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Purest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art....
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.



Also, check out the engravings opposite some of Shelley's poems in "A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought," by David Allen Williams. I've scanned two pages (in my picture section), and I would highly recommend this book to any poetry lover.

It's full of rare engravings opposite selections of poetry and verse. A lost classic worth checking out (below).

A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought
A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought

One-dimensional selection, in Victorian confection
Suppose someone published a Shakespeare selection, that included pretty set pieces from the plays ("Queen Mab! What's she?" from _Romeo and Juliet_, "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows" from _Midsummer Night's Dream_), bits of _The Rape of Lucrece_ and _Venus and Adonis_, every last one of the "Sonnetf to Sundrie Notef of Mufic_, and a few songs: "It was a lover and his lass," and the like.But anything that hinted at a darker worldview or Shakespeare's wider range was ruthlessly excluded.

And suppose further that this anthology claimed that it represented Shakespeare's best work, showing his range and the things that make that writer great.So that anyone who knew Shakespeare through that anthology would think that he was good for the odd flower poem and a bit of "Hey nonny nonny" but not much else besides.

Isobel Quigly's _Shelley: A Selection_ is the Shelleyan equivalent of that Shakespeare anthology.Thus, Shelley's epic philosophical drama _Prometheus Unbound_, both a meditation about the relationship between thought and language and a metaphor for political renewal based on moral growth (among other things), is represented by a couple of incidental lyrics; all complexity and depth are left on Quigly's cutting room floor._Julian and Maddalo_, with its urbanity, its bitter wit, crisp dialogue and vivid characterisation, is represented by one short purple passage (admittedly a splendid one) describing sunset over the Euganean hills.

The satirical Shelley is not represented at all: the contemptuous handling of contemporary political figures in the energetically grotesque _Oedipus Tyrannus_ is missing in action, as is the more nuanced satire of _Peter Bell the Third_.Oh, and the real Shelley may have been passionately engaged in the real world, protesting poverty, war and oppression in general and by specifics, in hard detail and in words of fire: but you won't find a hint of that in Quigly's selection.Many of Shelley's finest poems are simply omitted._The Mask of Anarchy_ , _Song to the Men of England_, _Similes for Two Political Characters_, _Feelings of a Republican on Hearing the Death of Napoleon_, for example, and much else besides: Quigly won't trouble you with a word of it.

What she gives instead is every "pretty" poem Shelley ever wrote.That includes great lyrics like the _Ode to the West Wind_ and _To a Skylark_ and others, but also all the poems Shelley dashed off as gifts to women friends, often for them to use as song lyrics, and often written to fit existing tunes.These became enormously popular anthology pieces in the Victorian period, though Shelley himself showed little interest in them and never bothered to publish them.

It's not that these are bad poems.All are good of their kind, and many conceal a hard metaphysical kernel under a candied surface: _When the lamp is shattered_, and _Music when soft voices die_, for example.Shelley was in a sense more of a metaphysical than a romantic poet, and in another sense more of a metaphysical poet than the metaphysicals themselves, since he was often concerned with genuine metaphysical questions in his poetry: thought and language, epistemology, and so on.

But [...] Shelley is a minor and one-dimensional poet on the basis of this selection.But it's the selection at fault, not the poet.

Quigly also, irritatingly, strips poems of their contexts.She gives _Alastor_ and (surprisingly in view of its Dantean difficulties) _Epipsychidion_ complete, but rips away the prefaces that Shelley used, in each case, as part of his framing and distancing effect: they are important to the way in which the poem is to be presented, and to be approached.

She also follows the Victorians in getting various telling details wrong.Thus _The Indian Girl's Serenade_ is printed as _The Indian Serenade_; the change allowed the Victorians to treat the poem as a personal lyric rather than a performance piece, and to marvel over Shelley's exquisite but rather weak sensibility: "O lift me from the grass!I die, I faint, I fall!"

The name change conceals the fact that this poem was written for soprano performance (to a tune from Mozart's _La Clemenza di Tito_).Its charm is that it allows the performer opportunities to both use feminine wiles and at the same time mock them.The "faint" at the end of the song is best performed, by the singer, with one eye open to judge the effect.But Quigly knows nothing of this, referring to Shelley's "wholly personal love poems" in her wholly clueless introduction.

Quigly's introduction clearly places her as a late surviving Victorian, who has read a little Leavis and Elliot but nothing of the critical work done on Shelley up to this anthology's first publication date, which is 1956.Nothing has changed in this recent re-publication, despite the rich and fascinating work in Shelley criticism and Shelley studies in the years since Leavis.But Quigly wouldn't be the person to guide you through that material anyway.

I recommend the Norton Selection of Shelley's poetry and prose instead, with a much better and wider selection, and intelligent introduction and notes.And it's quite reasonable to want theromantic (in the Valentine's Day sense) Shelley, though that is only one side of a multi-faceted poet of astounding technical skill, sophistication and range: but for that side of Shelley I'd recommend Richard Hughes' _Shelley on Love_.Either selection is far better than this vapid and misleading collection of prettiana.

Cheers!

Laon
PS Also avoid Penguin's Poet to Poet series' Shelley entry.20th century poetaster Kathryn Raine's Shelley selection is if anything slighter than Quigly's.

Wonderful, but slightly one dimensional
Shelly was a master at combining images and creating a world that was uniquley his own. The problem is, that world seemed to consist mainly of foggy sea shores at sunrise and forest cathedrals. While there is nothing wrong with visiting such a world, there is very little reason to stay there.

Shelly's lyrics are uneven, sometimes resorting to rhymes that make me cringe. His strength is iambic prose. Even this suffers from what appears to be a limited vocabulary which para doxically inclused eccentric spellings like "aery".

Having said all that, I must admit that I am in sypmpathy with Shelly. He dwells in a solitary world of fairy beauty that is the spiritual home of every soul in search of Truth. This goes a long way toward forgiving his somewhat middle ground talent.

"Queen Mab" and "Alastor" are the best peoms in this collection. Most of the other seem to be either comments or footnotes to these. They encompass Shelly's strange universe beautifully.

"Alastor" is the strongest in terms of imagery reflecting isolation and the hard choice to foresake worldy pleasure to find a higher truth. All sorts of moonlit coves lie just past the crashing waves of the main stream. One only wishes that Shelly could see the beauty he was leaving was a part of what he sought.

I recomment this edition, and the critical essay at its beginning, as a starting point for study of Shelly and his work.

Excellent Shelly Collection
I very much enjoyed this collection.It introduced me to the poignant poetry of one of the greatest English Romantic writers.Shelly is a poet you will most likely be required to read at some point in your life.Ifnot, you would be doing a serious diservice to yourself to not seek toindulge in his writings by your own accord."Song to the Men ofEngland" is perhaps my favourite Shelly poem, despite the fact that itillustrates the utter hypocrisy of English aristocrats.This collection isbound beautifully, and includes all of the poems Shelly was famous for.Itis priced reasonably, so there should therefore be no reason for you not topick it up! ... Read more

Product Description
The 3-volume Oxford edition, edited by Thomas Huthchinson, in one file. According to Wikipedia: "Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822; pronounced /ˈpɝːsɪ ˈbɪʃ ˈʃɛlɪ/[1]) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy. However, his major works were long visionary poems including Alastor, Adonais, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life." ... Read more

Product Description
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin) (1797-1851) was an English romantic gothic novelist. She received an excellent education, which was unusual for girls at the time. She never went to school, but she was taught to read and write by Louisa Jones, and then educated in a broad range of subjects by her father, who gave her free access to his extensive library. In particular, she was encouraged to write stories, and one of these early works Mounseer Nongtongpaw was published by the Godwin Company's Juvenile Library when she was only eleven. One night, perhaps attributable to Galvani's report, Mary had a waking dream; she recounted the episode in this way: "What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow. " This nightmare served as the basis for the novel that she entitled Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). Amongst her other works are: The Last Man (1826), Proserpine and Midas (1922) and Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. ... Read more

Product Description
Percy Bysshe Shelley endures today as the great Promethean bard of the High Romantic period who is best remembered for extolling the sublime and affirming the possibility of transcendence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Best Available, Despite Flaws
This edition reprints the Shelley portion of the old Modern Library Giants volume, The Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley (who made a rather odd couple, but were nowhere near as mismatched as William Blake and John Donne, stars of a companion Giants volume).
Because Keats wrote about 450 (standard print) pages of poetry in his short life, and Shelley in his slightly longer time wrote close to a thousand - not counting his various prefaces and lengthy notes, as well as the interesting commentary of his first editor, and widow, Mary Shelley, which all previous editions had retained - it should come as no surprise that the capacity of even a Giants volume was strained, and compromises had to be made.
The compromises all hit Shelley, as the more prolific and perennially less popular of the two poets: many early poems, and some of the more fragmentary lyrics and translations were simply left out; the remaining juvenilia, including the long poem Queen Mab, were printed in double column format (with so many carry-over lines that you wonder why), as was a mid-length poem of his maturity, Rosalind and Helen. Shelley's notes to Queen Mab and some other prose, mostly connected with the early poems, were also omitted.
The Giant edition, even with these sacrifices made, was still longer than War and Peace. If one accepts that putting almost all the works of Shelley and Keats together in one volume is a desirable thing, then it has to be admitted this was a pretty decent way to do it. As it was an inexpensive commercial edition, it didn't go out of its way to better the established texts of rival editions (dating back to around 1900).
Modern Library later re-released the contents in separate Shelley and Keats volumes that have remained in print to this day; the ML Shelley was the only (fairly) modern, (mostly) complete, (generally) readable - all rival editions were double-column - edition available during the 70s, 80s, 90s; with the single exception of the Oxford University Press edition that was aborted after two volumes (covering the poems up to about 1816), and cost about a zillion dollars per book.
Today there are two expertly-edited, impressively over-annotated complete versions in the works: one American, one British. The American edition has only one volume out (as of mid-2002), containing just the first 150 pages of his poetry, and for about eighty American dollars. Shelley's greatness bloomed a bit late: the consistently readable poetry will only appear from volume 2 on; the great works will start around volume 4, at this rate. The British edition, by Longmans, costs well over a hundred dollars a volume, is not available..., and seems to only consist of a second volume at this time, representing Laon & Cythna through the Cenci (c.1817-1818). Both these volumes were published years ago; at this rate we should have rival perfectly-edited, entirely unaffordable complete editions of Shelley's entire poetical works by about 2015.
I give all this information to demonstrate that the Modern Library edition, -despite- reprinting inadequate texts of The Triumph of Life and Laon & Cythna / The Revolt of Islam, -despite- omitting the famous notes to Queen Mab (so much better than the poem), -despite- printing some material in hideous double columns...
...is the best volume of this great author's works available.

Best Available, Despite Flaws
This edition reprints the Shelley portion of the old Modern Library Giants volume, The Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley (who made a rather odd couple, but were nowhere near as mismatched as William Blake and John Donne, stars of a companion Giants volume).
Because Keats wrote about 450 (standard print) pages of poetry in his short life, and Shelley in his slightly longer time wrote close to a thousand - not counting his various prefaces and lengthy notes, as well as the interesting commentary of his first editor, and widow, Mary Shelley, which all previous editions had retained - it should come as no surprise that the capacity of even a Giants volume was strained, and compromises had to be made.
The compromises all hit Shelley, as the more prolific and perennially less popular of the two poets: many early poems, and some of the more fragmentary lyrics and translations were simply left out; the remaining juvenilia, including the long poem Queen Mab, were printed in double column format (with so many carry-over lines that you wonder why), as was a mid-length poem of his maturity, Rosalind and Helen. Shelley's notes to Queen Mab and some other prose, mostly connected with the early poems, were also omitted.
The Giant edition, even with these sacrifices made, was still longer than War and Peace. If one accepts that putting almost all the works of Shelley and Keats together in one volume is a desirable thing, then it has to be admitted this was a pretty decent way to do it. As it was an inexpensive commercial edition, it didn't go out of its way to better the established texts of rival editions (dating back to around 1900).
Modern Library later re-released the contents in separate Shelley and Keats volumes that have remained in print to this day; the ML Shelley was the only (fairly) modern, (mostly) complete, (generally) readable - all rival editions were double-column - edition available during the 70s, 80s, 90s; with the single exception of the Oxford University Press edition that was aborted after two volumes (covering the poems up to about 1816), and cost about a zillion dollars per book.
Today there are two expertly-edited, impressively over-annotated complete versions in the works: one American, one British. The American edition has only one volume out (as of mid-2002), containing just the first 150 pages of his poetry, and for about eighty American dollars. Shelley's greatness bloomed a bit late: the consistently readable poetry will only appear from volume 2 on; the great works will start around volume 4, at this rate. The British edition, by Longmans, costs well over a hundred dollars a volume, is not available on Amazon, and seems to only consist of a second volume at this time, representing Laon & Cythna through the Cenci (c.1817-1818). Both these volumes were published years ago; at this rate we should have rival perfectly-edited, entirely unaffordable complete editions of Shelley's entire poetical works by about 2015.
I give all this information to demonstrate that the Modern Library edition, -despite- reprinting inadequate texts of The Triumph of Life and Laon & Cythna / The Revolt of Islam, -despite- omitting the famous notes to Queen Mab (so much better than the poem), -despite- printing some material in hideous double columns...
...is the best volume of this great author's works available.

Buyer beware!
This disgraceful edition calls itself the "Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley".It is nothing of the kind.

Much of Shelley's work was suppressed by 19th century editors, poems such as "A Ballad" for example.The poem, beginning "Young Parson Richards stood at his gate", was one of the poems Shelley intended for his projected "Popular Songs" volume, political poems in simple language to be sold amongst workers and their families in England."A ballad" concerns religious hypocrisy, prostitution and starvation.

Standard editions of Shelley still suppress this poem, 218 years after it was written.

Shelley's first editor, Mary Shelley had no choice about censoring Shelley's more radical poems: she was dependent on Shelley's father Sir Timothy Shelley, for 150 pounds a year that was the different between survival and starvation for herself and her son.And Sir Timothy wanted his dead son, that shameful atheist, democrat and philanthropist, forgotten.Mary Shelley was under financial threat if she preserved her late husband's memory, and in that context her work as editor was brave and loyal.

Let's not forget that people went to jail, during the early and mid-19th century, for publishing Shelley's works: Chartist and other working class and radical publishers.

But by the cusp of the 20th century, Shelley's Victorian editors had no such excuses: and they were neither brave nor loyal.They _could_ have produced a genuinely complete works, but they chose not to.They wanted to give the world a harmless Shelley, a "beautiful and ineffectual angel", as Matthew Arnold called him, and they were prepared to suppress and distort Shelley's works to help preserve that image.

But- amazingly - here we are in the 21st century, and this edition appears.And not only does it perpetuate the various omissions of Shelley's 19th century editors/suppressors (why is _Laon and Cythna_ still appearing in its bowdlerised form as _The Revolt of Islam_?), but THIS EDITION ACTUALLY DELETES CONTROVERSIAL SHELLEY MATERIAL THAT EVEN THE VICTORIANS HAD THE COURAGE TO PRINT.

So if you buy this edition, you'll find many Shelley poems missing, as you will if you buy the Oxford edition of Shelley's Poetical Works.But in this edition you will also find that the notes to _Queen Mab_ have disappeared.Why?The notes to _Queen Mab_ are as integral a part of the poem as Elliot'sNotes to _The Wasteland_.The reason is not space, or that the notes are prose.If prose was the problem, why not remove the long prefaces to several of the longer works, or the notes to _Hellas_, or Mrs Shelley's notes?

The reason, clearly, is that Shelley's opinions, as expressed in the notes ot _Queen Mab_ are still controversial.The atheism and the defence of religious freedom including freedom from religion, his hatred of his government's military adventures, his views on marriage, on prostitution, his proto-socialism, are still capable of offending the sort of committee that gets books pulled from libraries, especially school libraries.

And sadly, it seems that there are still publishers who believe that people should be protected from the knowledge that Shelley was a radical, a controversialist on the side of the weak, the poor and powerless, an activist some of whose messages would see him in trouble, still, with those in power today.

Not everyone who buys Shelley _wants_ Shelley the controversialist, of course.He is perhaps the supreme English lyric poet, a poet of nature and of light, idealism and love.But even if you don't particularly want to read the notes to _Queen Mab_, and the other material missing from this volume, you may feel that censorship of a major English poet, whose work and thought should be part of all of our heritage, should not be rewarded or encouraged.Don't buy this edition.There is a complete edition coming, in four volumes, edited by Neil Fraistat.Unfortunately, at US$57 a volume, that will be out of many people's price ranges.However it can be hoped that Fraistat's edition will shame the several publishers of one-volume "Complete Poems" into ending the current censorship and suppression.

But this edition is a huge and disgraceful step _backwards_ in Shelley publishing: actually containing less than the already-inadequate Oxford Complete Poetry.In the meantime, I can only recommend that Shelley lovers buy the Oxford edition, if they can't afford the Fraistat.

No cheers on this one,

Laon (no relation)

if you're looking for Shelley - this is THE ONE
This is a fantastic collection of Shelley's work. The breadth, depth, and soul of the man is astounding; his love and invention endless. What truly defines this collection over others is Mary Shelley's presence runningthrough it, providing vivid, incredibly poignant and grounded counterpointto Shelley's flights of fancy.

To get a true sense of his gifts as apoet, you have to dig into the longer work - none of which you're going tofind in the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Just another reason this bookrocks.

Shelley was a revolutionary, both in form and content. His finerefforts stands alongside the best the English language has produced. Dig itin the way it was written; heart to hand, pen to paper, and unexcerpted. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description

This major biography of Shelley, England's most radical and controversial Romantic poet, is the first to appear in thirty years. Informed by the author's extensive research, psychological insight, and recent scholarship on Shelley and his circle, the biography stresses the intimate relationship between the poet's writing and his complex personality.

James Bieri draws upon his dual background as a Shelley scholar and a psychologist to create a compelling narrative of Shelley's multifaceted life. Shelley's personality transcends any entreaty either to see it "plain" or to be labeled with a clinical diagnosis. Remarkably resilient, he was continually creative despite intervals of depression and periodic, hallucinatory panic attacks. Fascinated by the human psyche, he incorporated into his poetry his own self-analysis, including a remarkably sophisticated theory of love that provided the title to his most powerful erotic poem, Epipsychidion.

Bieri also probes Shelley's numerous emotional, romantic, and familial entanglements. Based on the author's twenty years of research, the book includes new information on the discovery of Shelley's older illegitimate half-brother; important letters of his father and grandfather; his mother's early life, her letters about young Shelley, and her major influence upon Shelley; the first published portrait of Sophia Stacey, who beguiled Shelley in Florence; and further evidence on Shelley's secretly adopted Neapolitan infant.

This biography offers a sympathetic and nuanced view of Shelley's tumultuous life, personality, and poetry.

Customer Reviews (1)

Like Joy In Memory Yet
I don't imagine that anyone who is not, like myself, an ardent, lifelong admirer of Shelley reading this hefty tome, especially at its current price.Therefore, this review shall be aimed at those with an ardent love of the man and his visionary work.

Bieri's biography is the first full-fledged overview of Shelley, tackling all aspects of the poet's life and work, since that of Richard Holmes, written over thirty years ago.Thus, the first thing that many lifelong Shelleyans will do is to compare the two.I have borne this in mind while reading it and believe, all things considered, that Bieri comes out on top for two basic reasons: 1:) His comprehensive, methodical approach 2 :) The deeply nuanced portrait of Shelley that Bieri, using all the information and documentation at his disposal, presents here.Yes, there have been some new discoveries since the Holmes biography.But that information in the hands of a less astute, carefully-considered writer would not produce a better biography.This is not to denigrate the Holmes biography - which, in contrast, seems (an understandable fault) more like a love letter to the poet than this magisterial work, which captures more of the nuances in the short life and tremendous output of Percy Bysshe.

Inexorably, Bieri is not without his peccadilloes.The obvious one is that Bieri, with his background as a prominent psychologist, puts the subject of his biography on the analyst's couch.In the beginning of this biography, he succumbs to this temptation several times, at one point stating that "Shelley would have agreed with Freud."But, past the first one hundred pages, he very admirably manages to curb this instinct, asseverating that, "Placing Shelley in any diagnostic category ignores the strengths and weaknesses that formed his unique, complex personality." by page 251.

The other, to my mind, deeper error here, is that Bieri at many points seems to conflate Shelley's Humean skepticism with his, obvious to most readers, rhetorical questions at the end of poems such as "Mount Blanc" and "Ode to The West Wind".It may be that Bieri is simply trying to cover all his bases here, proposing an alternative interpretation.But I, for one, think it fair to say that the obvious answer to the "skeptical" question at the end of "Mount Blanc":

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

is, quite obviously, "Nothing!"

My personal reaction to reading this biography was entrancement.Shelley has been at the top of my literary pantheon since boyhood, but it's been a while since I refreshed my mind with his poetry and the story of his life.I have neglected many a thing over the past week in the reading of this book - including, I'm afraid, expressing proper appreciation for Christmas gifts, which I opened absent-mindedly while turning these pages.Shelley has often been called a "poet's poet" and, whether this accusation be true or not, he definitely affects and touches a certain type of person, the type of person who can relate to Shelley's words (transcribed here) that, "I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal."The book brought back to me why I esteem Shelley and his poetry to such a great degree and, much more than that, reanimated my identification with Shelley, felt since boyhood.

This book is a must read for all Shelley lovers, all who feel love, as Shelley defines it in his essay "On Love"as (again, quoted herein) "that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves."

One comes away from this book deeply affected by Shelley as a man and poet who - despite all the sadnesses, deaths, betrayals and other tragedies in his short life - was able to pen these words in "Prometheus Unbound":

"To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent:
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory."

Thank you, Mr. Bieri.
... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
A novel based on the passionate and tempestuous life of Shelley, and the contradictions in his life: one minute a loving husband, the next a straying lover; one time a serious philosopher, and then a soaring romantic. It tries to discover the truth behind the legendary figure. ... Read more

Product Description

ReadHowYouWant publishes a wide variety of best selling books in Large and Super Large fonts in partnership with leading publishers. EasyRead books are available in 11pt and 13pt. type. EasyRead Large books are available in 16pt, 16pt Bold, and 18pt Bold type. EasyRead Super Large books are available in 20pt. Bold and 24pt. Bold Type. You choose the format that is right for you.

An outstanding collection by Shelley – the Romantic poet who penned more than a thousand pages of poetry in his entire life. He lives today through these works which enjoy enduring popularity. You will also feel the presence of his wife Mary Shelley who not only put together this anthology but also added her own notes, thus adding further flavour to the book. Delightful!

To find more titles in your format, Search in Books using EasyRead and the size of the font that makes reading easier and more enjoyable for you.

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep! One pale as yonder wan and horned moon, With lips of lurid blue, The other glowing like the vital morn, When throned on ocean's wave. ... Read more

Product Description
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame, And in thy sight its fading plumes display; The watery bow burned in the evening flame. But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way-- And that is dead.--O, let me not believe That anything of mine is fit to live! ... Read more

Product Description
The book may have numerous typos or missing text. It is not illustrated or indexed. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website. You can also preview the book there.Purchasers are also entitled to a trial membership in the publisher's book club where they can select from more than a million books for free.Volume: 4 Original Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Publication date: 1892Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Poetry / General; Poetry / American / General; Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh ... Read more

Product Description

This new Longman Cultural Edition features Shelley’s poetry and political writing, emphasizing his role as radical theorist, political reformer, and passionate advocate of individual and civil liberty. 

This thoughtful collection reflects the deep political convictions that inform works such as Prometheus Unbound and Ode to the West Wind, often regarded as abstract and esoteric. 

Handsomely produced and affordably priced, the Longman Cultural Editions series presents classic works in provocative and illuminating contexts-cultural, critical, and literary.  Each Cultural Edition consists of the complete texts of important literary works, reliably edited, headed by an inviting introduction, and supplemented by helpful annotations; a table of dates to track its composition, publication, and public reception in relation to biographical, cultural and historical events; and a guide for further inquiry and study.

Product Description
A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless sentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by Shout could make them! ... Read more

Product Description
With The Explanatory Notes Of Shelley's Poems By Mrs. Shelley. ... Read more