ABSTRACT
Composed at Bishopsgate between 10 September and 14 December 1815 (the date of the Preface). Mary S. wrote (1839 i 141) that ‘“Alastor” was composed on his return’ from the voyage up the Thames to Lechlade (begun at the end of August), for which S.’s letter of 10 September (L i 430) provides a terminal date, and in a letter postmarked 22 September S. told Hogg: ‘I have been engaged lately in the commencement of several literary plans, which if my present temper of mind endures I shall probably complete in the winter’ (L i 432). In sending the poem to Southey in March, S. called it ‘the product of a few serene hours of the last beautiful autumn’ (L i 461). But S. had foreshadowed the theme of the poem even before his Thames expedition in a letter to Hogg postmarked 26 August (L i 429–30): ‘Yet who is there that will not pursue phantoms, spend his choicest hours in hunting after dreams, and wake only to perceive his error and regret that death is so near?’ By 6 January 1816, the Alastor volume was in print except for the last sheet, and in this state was offered for publication to Murray (L i 438), who declined it. It was eventually announced as ready for publication ‘in a few days’ on 6 February by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, jointly with Carpenter & Son (L i 449), and S.’s father had received a copy by 27 February (S in Eng 463).
