Sculpting the Middle Class

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major Romantic poets, and wrote what is critically recognised as some of the finest lyric poetry in the English language. This is the third volume which presents all of Shelley's poems in chronological order and with full annotation. Date and circumstances of composition are provided for each poem and all manuscript and printed sources relevant to establishing an authentic and accurate text are freshly examined and assessed. Headnotes and footnotes furnish the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary to an informed reading of Shelley's varied and allusive verse. The present volume comprises poems composed between autumn 1819 and autumn 1820. The peoms written in response to the political crisis in England following the 'Peterloo' massacre in August 1819 feature largely in this volume, among them The Mask of Anarchy and An Ode (Arise, arise, arise!). The popular songs, which Shelley intended to gather into a volume to inspire reformers from the labouring classes, several accompanied by significantly new textual material recovered from draft manuscripts, are included, as are the important political works Ode to Liberty, Ode to Naples and Oedipus Tyrrannus, Shelley's burlesque Greek tragedy on the Queen Caroline affair. The comic ballad Peter Bell the Third takes Wordsworth as a type of the betrayal of the poet's calling by party politics. Other major poems featured include The Sensitive-Plant, Ode to the West Wind, Letter to Maria Gisbourne, an exuberant translation from the ancient Greek of the Homeric Hymn to Mercury, and the brilliantly inventive The Witch of Atlas. In addition to accompanying commentries, there are extensive bibliographies, a chronology of Shelley's life, and indexes to titles and first lines. Leigh Hunt's informative Preface of 1832 to The Mask of Anerchy is also included as an appendix.