To —— [Lines to a Reviewer]

This irregular sonnet was first published in the Original Poetry section of Leigh Hunt’s The Literary Pocket-Book for 1823 (LPB) 115, where it is entitled To —— and signed with the Gk capital letter sigma Σ. Hunt appears to have printed it from a fair copy in S.’s hand, originally in Harvard Nbk 1 but torn from it (no doubt to allow him to make a copy for the press), and now in Box 1 f. 75^r: see headnote to To —— [Lines to a Critic]. S. transcribed the fair copy himself from his draft of ll. 1–8 in Nbk 11 179–80 and of ll. 9–13 in Nbk 10 f. 28^v rev. Neither draft is titled. In Harvard Nbk 1, the text is headed To ——, which is written with a different pen-point, probably (as MYRS v suggests) by Mary. In the list of Contents that she made at the end of Harvard Nbk 1, the poem is identified as To —— a sonnet, even though it contains only thirteen lines and lacks a sonnet’s rhyme-scheme. In 1824 it is called simply Sonnet III and is undated, only acquiring the title by which it has generally been known, Lines to a Reviewer, in 1839 (iv 48), where it is included among the Poems Written in 1820.