Produced by Sue Asscher <asschers@dingoblue.net.au>
1914.
This edition of his "Poetical Works" contains all Shelley'sascertained poems and fragments of verse that have hitherto appearedin print. In preparing the volume I have worked as far as possible onthe principle of recognizing the editio princeps as the primarytextual authority. I have not been content to reprint Mrs. Shelley'srecension of 1839, or that of any subsequent editor of the "Poems".The present text is the result of a fresh collation of the earlyeditions; and in every material instance of departure from the wordingof those originals the rejected reading has been subjoined in afootnote. Again, wherever—as in the case of "Julian andMaddalo"—there has appeared to be good reason for superseding theauthority of the editio princeps, the fact is announced, and thesubstituted exemplar indicated, in the Prefatory Note. in the case ofa few pieces extant in two or more versions of debatable authority thealternative text or texts will be found at the [end] of the [relevantwork]; but it may be said once for all that this does not pretend tobe a variorum edition, in the proper sense of the term—the textualapparatus does not claim to be exhaustive. Thus I have not thought itnecessary to cumber the footnotes with every minute grammaticalcorrection introduced by Mrs. Shelley, apparently on her ownauthority, into the texts of 1839; nor has it come within the schemeof this edition to record every conjectural emendation adopted orproposed by Rossetti and others in recent times. But it is hoped that,up to and including the editions of 1839 at least, no importantvariation of the text has been overlooked. Whenever a reading has beenadopted on manuscript authority, a reference to the particular sourcehas been added below.
I have been chary of gratuitous interference with the punctuation ofthe manuscripts and early editions; in this direction, however, somerevision was indispensable. Even in his most carefully finished "faircopy" Shelley under-punctuates (Thus in the exquisite autograph "HuntMS." of "Julian and Maddalo", Mr. Buxton Forman, the most conservativeof editors, finds it necessary to supplement Shelley's punctuation inno fewer than ninety-four places.), and sometimes punctuatescapriciously. In the very act of transcribing his mind was apt tostray from the work in hand to higher things; he would lose himself incontemplating those airy abstractions and lofty visions of which alonehe greatly cared to sing, to the neglect and detriment of the merelyexternal and formal element of his song. Shelley recked little of thejots and tittles of literary craftsmanship; he committed many a smallsin against the rules of grammar, and certainly paid but a haltingattention to the nice distinctions of punctuation. Thus in the earlyeditions a comma occasionally plays the part of a semicolon; colonsand semicolons seem to be employed interchangeably; a semicolon almostinvariably appears where nowadays we should employ the dash; and,lastly, the dash itself becomes a point of all work, replacingindifferently commas, colons, semicolons or periods. Inadequate andsometimes haphazard as it is, however, Shelley's punctuation, so faras it goes,