For this #publishersbindingthursday, I bring to you the first edition, published in 1839, of Shelley’s Poetical Works, which, at the time of its publication, was the first authorised edition to collect all the poetry of Shelley. Edited by a great literary giant in her own right, his wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, these four volumes are bound in the original publisher’s deluxe red pebble-grained cloth with blind embossed covers and gilt spines. See the third unedited photo for a full saturation view of the colour.
‘He died, and the world shewed no outward sign; but his influence over mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting, and in the ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles.’
The significance of these works to literature cannot be overstated. They are, importantly, edited by a woman, at a time when the participation of women in the literary world was strictly limited to an engagement with particular subjects in particular genres. Mary carefully selected, reconstructed, and in some cases completed Shelley’s works, providing the basis for much of the Shelleyan canon that we know today. She also furnished these works with extensive prefaces and copious notes to make the oeuvre of a man who was highly misunderstood during his lifetime more intelligible to Victorian audiences, to ensure his message of universal love was truly universally disseminated. The relevance of her remarkable notes are not circumscribed to the Victorian period, as they are just as illuminating and educational today as they were then, providing glimpses into the Shelleys’ lives but also into the socio-political milieu of the early nineteenth century.
{ #darkacademia #lightacademia
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