The Poetical Works Of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ed. By Mrs. Shelley. With A Memoir...

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.

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 running through it, providing vivid, incredibly poignant and grounded counterpoint to Shelley's flights of fancy. To get a true sense of his gifts as a poet, you have to dig into the longer work - none of which you're going to find in the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Just another reason this book rocks.Shelley was a revolutionary, both in form and content. His finer efforts stands alongside the best the English language has produced. Dig it in the way it was written; heart to hand, pen to paper, and unexcerpted.