Percy Bysshe Shelley: References & Edit History

Studies in all languages are listed and reviewed annually in the Keats-Shelley Journal; its bibliographies through 1974 are collected in Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hunt, and Their Circles, vol. 1 ed. by David Bonnell Green and Edwin Graves Wilson (1964), and vol. 2 ed. by Robert A. Hartley (1978).

Thomas Hutchinson (ed.), Poetical Works [of] Shelley, 2nd ed. rev. by G.M. Matthews (1970); and The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by Frederick L. Jones, 2 vol. (1964), have been supplemented, especially in Shelley and His Circle, ed. by Kenneth Neill Cameron and Donald H. Reiman (1961– ). Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. by Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (1977), provides critically edited selections.

The major biographies are Edward Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vol. (1886), also available in an abridged one-volume edition with the same title (1886, reissued 1969); and Newman Ivey White, Shelley, 2 vol. (1940, reissued 1972), also available in a one-volume abridged edition, Portrait of Shelley (1945, reissued 1968). Other readable efforts include Edmund Blunden, Shelley: A Life Story (1946, reprinted 1973); and Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (1974, reprinted 1987). These are corrected and supplemented by Kenneth Neill Cameron, The Young Shelley (1950, reprinted 1973), and Shelley: The Golden Years (1974).

Critical introductions include Donald H. Reiman, Percy Bysshe Shelley, rev. ed. (1990); and Timothy Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood (1977). Major books include Carlos Baker, Shelley’s Major Poetry (1948, reissued 1966); Earl R. Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading (1971); Judith Chernaik, The Lyrics of Shelley (1972); Stuart Curran, Shelley’s Annus Mirabilis (1975); Charles E. Robinson, Shelley and Byron (1976); Nathaniel Brown, Sexuality and Feminism in Shelley (1979); Michael Henry Scrivener, Radical Shelley (1982); William Keach, Shelley’s Style (1984); Stuart M. Sperry, Shelley’s Major Verse (1988); Jerrold E. Hogle, Shelley’s Process (1988); Angela Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime (1984); and P.M.S. Dawson, The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics (1980).