Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) quickly rose to the high ranks of the Romantic Movement with his pure and moving lyric verse. Born in Sussex, England, he became a visionary and highly influential Romantic in search of truth and beauty. Shelley maintained a close circle of literary friends, including Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and Leigh Hunt. A master of versification, imagery, tone, and symbolism, Shelley's poems propelled an entire era of English literature into the next century. This volume collects a diverse range of his work, representative of his great range and depth as a poet. Here we encounter "Ozymandias," "Prometheus Unbound," "Adonais," "To a Skylark," "Helas," "Ode to the West Wind," and many more. Along with Lord Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, Shelley would help propel Romanticism to its peak, paving the way for Victorian poetry and eventually 20th century modernism. Shelley's influence is undeniable and far-reaching. His lines, subtle and complex, fleeting and permanent, name and grasp beauty in an attempt at transcendence through the sublimeness of the natural world.

Winners of an Honorable Mention from the Modern Language Association's Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition Writing to his publisher in 1813, Shelley expressed the hope that two of his major works "should form one volume"; nearly two centuries later, the second volume of the Johns Hopkins edition of The Complete Poetry fulfills that wish for the first time. This volume collects two important pieces: Queen Mab and The Esdaile Notebook. Privately issued in 1813, Queen Mab was perhaps Shelley's most intellectually ambitious work, articulating his views of science, politics, history, religion, society, and individual human relations. Subtitled A Philosophical Poem: With Notes, it became his most influential—and pirated—poem during much of the nineteenth century, a favorite among reformers and radicals. The Esdaile Notebook, a cycle of fifty-eight early poems, exhibits an astonishing range of verse forms. Unpublished until 1964, this sequence is vital in understanding how the poet mastered his craft. As in the acclaimed first volume, these works have been critically edited by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. The poems are presented as Shelley intended, with textual variants included in footnotes. Following the poems are extensive discussions of the circumstances of their composition and the influences they reflect; their publication or circulation by other means; their reception at the time of publication and in the decades since; their re-publication, both authorized and unauthorized; and their place in Shelley's intellectual and aesthetic development.