Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

This book contains a collection of poetry written by Percy Bysshe Shelly, originally published in 1810. It was Shelley's first published volume of poetry and was written in collaboration with his sister Elizabeth. This wonderful collection of Shelley’s early poetry is highly recommended for fans of his seminal work, and it is not to be missed by collectors. The poems contained herein include: “Letter”, “Song”, “Despair”, “Sorrow”, “Hope”, “Song, Translated from the Italian”, “Song, Translated from the German”, “The Irishman’s Song”, “St. Edmond’s Eve”, “Revenge”, “Ghasta, or the Avenging Demon”, and many more. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was an important English Romantic poet who is widely regarded as one of the finest lyric poets in the English Language. Many vintage texts such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now, in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Curzon Press
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528761611

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet. Born into a prominent political family, Shelley enjoyed a quiet and happy childhood in West Sussex, developing a passion for nature and literature at a young age. He struggled in school, however, and was known by his colleagues at Eton College and University College, Oxford as an outsider and eccentric who spent more time acquainting himself with radical politics and the occult than with the requirements of academia. During his time at Oxford, he began his literary career in earnest, publishing Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810) and St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (1811) In 1811, he married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he lived an itinerant lifestyle while pursuing affairs with other women. Through the poet Robert Southey, he fell under the influence of political philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary soon fell in love with the precocious young poet. In the summer of 1814, Shelley eloped to France with Mary and her stepsister Claire Claremont, travelling to Holland, Germany, and Switzerland before returning to England in the fall. Desperately broke, Shelley struggled to provide for Mary through several pregnancies while balancing his financial obligations to Godwin, Harriet, and his own father. In 1816, Percy and Mary accepted an invitation to join Claremont and Lord Byron in Europe, spending a summer in Switzerland at a house on Lake Geneva. In 1818, following several years of unhappy life in England, the Shelleys—now married—moved to Italy, where Percy worked on The Masque of Anarchy (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821), now considered some of his most important works. In July of 1822, Shelley set sail on the Don Juan and was lost in a storm only hours later. His death at the age of 29 was met with despair and contempt throughout England and Europe, and he is now considered a leading poet and radical thinker of the Romantic era.

Book preview

ORIGINAL

POETRY

BY

VICTOR & CAZIRE

[PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

& ELIZABETH SHELLEY]

Edited by

RICHARD GARNETT

C.B., LL.D.

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Horsham, Sussex, England in 1792. He studied at University College, Oxford, but his atheistic views got him expelled. Estranged from his father, he left home and began to take trips to London to spend time with famous journalist William Godwin. It was here, around the time that he published Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813), that Shelley met the Godwin’s daughter, Mary, quickly striking up a romantic relationship with her. In 1814, the two of them eloped to Switzerland, where they spent time with Lord Byron, and where the young Mary Shelley found the inspiration for her future masterpiece, Frankenstein (1818).

In 1815, the Shelleys moved back to London, where the two of them continued to write. Percy was a prolific producer of literature, and many of the verse works he penned in the last seven or eight years of his life – such as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy – are now considered some of the best in the English language. He was also known for his uncompromising idealism, most notably as a fierce advocate of non-violence and vegetarianism. Shelley spent the latter part of life in Italy, where he drowned during a sailing trip in 1822, aged just 29. It wasn’t until after his passing that he developed a large following, and since his death writers as varied as George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Karl Marx have all expressed their admiration for him.

INTRODUCTION

BETWEEN the completion of "Queen Mab" in 1813, and the composition of "Alastor" in 1815, Shelley underwent a silent internal revolution which transformed a vigorous writer in verse into a great original poet. Much the same transformation had previously occurred to Coleridge, but with this difference, that in the elder poet’s case the metamorphosis is manifestly due in great measure to the influence of Wordsworth, but in Shelley’s the impulse is wholly from within. The two poets, however, have this in common, that, unlike Wordsworth, Byron, and others who cannot claim to be enumerated among "the twice-born," from the period of their regeneration onward, their works are almost free from admixture with a prosaic element. Alone among the illustrious poetical reputations of their age, their fame would decidedly not be promoted by the suppression of any considerable proportion of their compositions after this crisis in their intellectual history. The test is an especially severe one as regards Shelley, not only because the actual bulk of his poetical work is so much greater than Coleridge’s, but because he has triumphantly borne such an ordeal from the publication of mere fragments of it as has perhaps fallen to the lot of no other