ABSTRACT
Drafted in pencil, with some ink insertions, in Nbk 11 (the lines are now badly faded); Mary’s two transcripts are both dated ‘Livorno, August 1819’, although when she published the fragment in 1840 she revised her date to July (see BSM ii 90-1, 230, and Massey 88-9). The transcript in adds. d. 9 is entitled To M The lines clearly belong to the period of Mary’s continuing deep depression following the death of William Shelley in June. S. wrote for example to Amelia Curran from Livorno on 5 August 1819 that ‘Mary’s spirits still continue wretchedly depressed - more so than a stranger… could imagine’ (L ii 107). Bruce Barker-Benfield places these lines in the context of the extraordinary series of letters sent by Godwin to his daughter in response to the news of William’s death, which coldly urge on Mary a stoical resolve which was so ill-judged that S. felt obliged by mid-August to start intercepting his letters (see Shelley’s Guitar 117-18, which gives a transcript of the draft, and L ii 109).
