Shelley and His Circle, 1773-1822

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.

Volumes V and VI of Shelley and His Circle illuminate a pivotal phase of Shelley's personal and artistic evolution. Spanning late 1816 through 1819, the manuscripts, letters, and journals included here illustrate Shelley's emerging poetic maturity, as well as his developing friendships with Leigh Hunt and John Keats.

These volumes chronicle the writing of The Revolt of Islam, Shelley's epic on the lessons of the French Revolution; the poet's journey to Italy; the deaths of his and Mary's two children; and his literary annus mirabilis in 1819. During this year, he wrote Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, and A Philosophical View of Reform, which is here presented in a corrected text. The sequence closes in late December 1819 with a series of letters that signal Shelley's growing isolation from his English cadre.

Among the 175 fully transcribed manuscripts in this set are eighty-two penned by Shelley, and many others by William Godwin, Hunt, and Lord Byron. Also included are significant early letters by Edward John Trelawny, in addition to letters and journals of Keats, Thomas Love Peacock, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and Edward E. Williams. An appendix featuring eleven early letters and poems by Byron completes this revelatory set.