Introduction

When Percy Bysshe Shelley was drowned in Italy in 1822 not long before his thirtieth birthday his literary reputation was much in doubt. Within a relatively short time his poetry had been accorded that canonical status which has been attached to his name ever since, but Shelley’s admission to the poetic canon was achieved at a price. Possibly the most neglected area of Shelley’s output which the present volume seeks to redress is his earliest writing, compositions dating mostly from the period 1808 to 1814 – from the time Shelley was at Eton and Oxford to the aftermath of the visit to Ireland, the elopement with Harriet Westbrook to Scotland and Wales and the break-up of their marriage in the wake of Shelley’s romance with Mary Godwin. Taking his cue from the final epigraph of Queen Mab, Martin Priestman presents a view of Shelley that dispels conventional notions of the young poet’s impractical venture into hard-line politics.