Editor's Note

THE text of this edition is that of the Centenary Edition of Shelley's Poetical Works, 1892, but differs from it by the omission of variant readings and emendations except in cases where the text is acknowledged to be corrupt or of doubtful authority. The only contribution to our knowledge of the sources of the text since 1892 is Professor Zupitza's description of some of the Oxford (formerly Boscombe) MSS., contributed to the Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Band XCIV, Heft 1, from which a few corrections have been noted; but for the student of the text the Centenary Edition is indispensable. The Memoir of that Edition is reprinted as the Biographical Sketch, and a condensation of the documentary extracts which in that edition were used to illustrate the history of the poems has been embodied in the Headnotes. The long notes in French and Greek affixed by Shelley to QUEEN MAB have been omitted at the suggestion of the General Editor of the series; and the Original Poetry of Victor and Cazire, of which a copy was found in 1898, has not been included. The NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS have been mainly confined to the more important poems of Shelley, especially ALASTOR, PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, EPIPSYCHIDION, ADONAIS and HELLAS; and they embrace only simple explanations of the text, the principal sources and parallel passages in the poets familiar to Shelley, and such cross-references as seemed to throw light on his ideas and habit of mind, together with a few critical comments; no attempt has been made to include such information as can be readily obtained from encyclopædias, dictionaries, manuals of mythology, and like works. In this portion of the work the editor has made use of the labors of scholars and critics who have studied particular poems of Shelley, and he takes pleasure in acknowledging special obligation to Professor Al. Beljame's Alastor, Miss Vida Scudder's Prometheus Unbound, Rossetti's Adonais, and Dr. Richard Ackermann's investigation of these three works and also the EPIPSYCHIDION; the fact that these studies have appeared in the last ten years in France, America, England and Germany indicates the vitality and extent of Shelley's fame.

: G. E. W.
: August, 1901.

CONTENTS BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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