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PREFACE

BY THE EDITOR.

THE ready and wide acceptance of my annotated Library Edition of the Works of Shelley induces me to believe that there is place for an edition of the text, given accurately from the most authentic sources without annotation of any kind. In the following pages, therefore, I have separated from the extensive notes and appendices of the Library Edition the text as there printed, adopting also the same principles of arrangement. There must be many students of Shelley who have no time or inclination to go into the pros and cons of textual discussion, but who would gladly have under their hands in a portable and readable form the ipsissima verba of the master in what has the best claim to be considered their ultimate developement. To this class of readers, variorum readings even are of no sufficient interest to compensate for repetition and the distraction of coming to a conclusion on the relative merits of the several readings; and for such, it will be enough to have the ultimate work in its entirety and integrity.

The present Edition contains every poem or fragment of verse by Shelley which has ever as far as I am aware been published, and a few dozens of lines not included in any previous edition. All his prefaces, dedications, notes, and mottoes are given, together with all his poetic translations, and an appendix consisting of the whole series of Juvenilia, from the Verses on a Cat written when he was some eight years old to the remarkable poem by which he is still perhaps most widely known-Queen Mab. This I have given in its original form among the Juvenilia; while including in the series of mature works, notwithstanding the considerable repetitions involved, the revision made in 1815 under the title of The

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