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COPYRIGHT 2001 Boston University
Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, ed. The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Vol. 1. Pp. xlii+492. $75.00.
Scholars wishing to consult an edition of Shelley's complete (or nearly complete) poetry today are in the anomalous position of using an edition nearly a century old. Thomas Hutchinson's Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Oxford UP, 1905), reprinted over a period of years as Poetical Works and then reissued with corrections by G. M. Matthews in 1970, could not take into account the great advances in Shelley scholarship of the twentieth century. Alternatively, one can consult The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (London: E. Benn; New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1926-30). The first four volumes of this ten-volume "Julian Edition" were devoted to poetry, and Ingpen and Peck had access to some manuscript material that had been unavailable to Hutchinson. However, their work was issued in an edition of 495 copies for sale in Britain and 295 in the United States, so that its price made it unobtainable by many individuals and it was not even in the collections of many college libraries. By the time it was reprinted (New York: Gordian Press; London: Benn, 1965), its editorial standards were obsolete and a great deal of additional manuscript material was available. Oxford University Press attempted to remedy this situation in 1972 by publishing the first volume of The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Neville Rogers, and a second volume, bringing the corpus to 1817, appeared in 1975. However, the critical response of reviewers to both volumes was so adverse that this edition was discontinued, leaving our thirst for a modern edition of all of Shelley's poetry unslaked. Now the long drought appears to be over at last, with not one but two editions of Shelley's complete poetry in progress.
The earlier of these, the Longman edition of The Poems of Shelley (hereafter 1989), was begun by G. M. Matthews, whose untimely death in 1984 left it to be completed by Kelvin Everest. Volume I, comprising poetry written through the middle of 1817, appeared in 1989, and volume 2, which covers 1817-1819, is now out. The Reiman and Fraistat Complete Poetry is a multiple volume series in progress, volume 1 being devoted to Shelley's very early poems. This Complete Poetry aims to be "a comprehensive edition that recovers the historical status of all his poetic texts" (xix). Judging from volume x, it will not only achieve this goal but also will become an indispensable reference work for...
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