Book description
Shelley’s genius as a lyric poet has been widely acknowledged at the expense of his other poetic gifts, yet he could produce with equal skill and technical dexterity the learned formal ode, the familiar verse epistle, the satire, the relaxed conversation poem, the Dantean history of love, the carefully wrought classical elegy, the extended exploratory lyric, the flyting, and the delighted celebration of natural energies.
Each of these forms is represented in this selection, which includes the whole of Julian and Maddalo, The Mask of Anarchy, Ode to Liberty, Letter to Maria Gisborne, Epipsychidion, Adonais and The Triumph of Life, together with selections from Prometheus Unbound and Peter Bell the Third, translations from Goethe and Homer, and many shorter poems.
All of these poems have been freshly edited, many from manuscript drafts and fair copies, and the edition also includes an introduction, detailed commentaries on the poems, an extensive biography and a chronology of Shelley’s life in the context of his times.
