ABSTRACT
Date, MS Evidence, and Circumstances of Composition. Tatsuo Tokoo’s groundbreaking article, ‘The Composition of Epipsychidion: Some Manuscript Evidence’, K-SJ xlii (1993) 97–103, established that a significant proportion of this poem draws upon passages of verse that had been drafted as early as 1819. The passages concerned are amongst those edited in the Appendix (Fragments connected with Epipsychidion, Longman iv 173–90), and are identified in the commentary to that item and in the following notes. S. appears to have begun to draft Epipsychidion at the end of January 1821 soon after abandoning Fiordispina, some lines of which it takes over (see commentary to no. 378 (Longman iv 62–77) and notes). The period of composition must have been rapid since the press copy of the poem was enclosed in a letter to Charles Ollier of 16 February (L ii 262–3). Given that Jane and Edward Williams, who the Shelleys had only met for the first time in mid-January 1821, are addressed as intimate friends in l. 601, some of the poem — though not all of it, as suggested in White ii 606 n. 15 — was probably composed in the first two weeks of February. Rough drafts of approximately 400 of its 604 lines survive mainly in Nbk 17 but also in Nbk 11, Nbk 15, Box 1 and Nbk 16. The latter nbk also contains three drafts of the Advertisement (see note to Adv. 1–9). MS sources of the drafts of the text are identified in BSM xxiii 259–60. The press copy almost certainly derived from an intermediate fair copy, as E. B. Murray remarks (BSM iv, Pt I, p. xxxi), but neither has survived. Mary copied the draft of ll. 5–12 in Nbk 11 p. 41 and made two copies of the draft of ll. 368–83 in Nbk 15 pp. 196–7 (see Mary Copybk 1 pp. 66–7, 22 and 74–5; BSM ii 134–5, 46–7 and 150–3). Lines 368–83 are further transcribed under the heading ‘The Comet’ in Mary Copybk 2 pp. 31–2 (Massey 82–5).
