ABSTRACT
Shelley was acutely conscious about the status of the poem known as ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’ and carefully placed it in a literary tradition. Shelley’s poem has been occasionally admired, but it has been afforded surprisingly little critical attention and its true character has rarely been acknowledged. One of the most notable features of Shelley’s epistolary manner is its ability to incorporate the quotidian and the seemingly ‘unpoetic’, its facility for absorbing or naming things which might seem more easily at home in the form of a letter in prose. Shelley is much concerned with the question of audience, or readership, and these issues feature both in his prose letter of 26 May and in ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’. Shelley’s verse-letter is also much concerned with personal reputation which, as he knew only too well, was often inextricably connected with the question of literary standing.
