The great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley had a complicated relationship with the British Empire and the culture of colonialism. Considered politically radical and scandalous in Britain, Shelley lived in self-imposed exile and set much of his writing in foreign places. In Strange Truths in Undiscovered Lands Nahoko Miyamoto Alvey examines the ways in which Shelley developed a 'Romantic geography' to provide visionary alternatives to an earth devastated by a new type of European colonialism and global expansion. Intertextually rich, Alvey's work establishes the context in which poems by Shelley and other Romantics were written by presenting relevant histories, travel texts, scientific writings, and archival material, and are all complemented by postcolonial analysis. Unique in its emphasis on the optimistic and positive aspects of Shelley's poetical works, Strange Truths in Undiscovered Lands offers a different perspective on Romantic Orientalism, and a new look at how the poet imagined the relationship between the Self and the Other. Thorough and original, this book will be of interest to Romanticists, postcolonialists, and anyone interested in alternative responses to acts of colonialism and empire.

Essays on aspects of English literature from Chaucer to Henry James, with special focus on the Romantics.

Winner of the 2013 Richard J. Finneran Award, Society for Textual ScholarshipOutstanding Academic Title, Choice "His name is Percy Bysshe Shelley, and he is the author of a poetical work entitled Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.” With these words, the radical journalist and poet Leigh Hunt announced his discovery in 1816 of an extraordinary talent within “a new school of poetry rising of late.” The third volume of the acclaimed edition of The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley includes Alastor, one of Shelley’s first major works, and all the poems that Shelley completed, for either private circulation or publication, during the turbulent years from 1814 to March 1818: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Mont Blanc, Laon and Cythna, as well as shorter pieces, such as his most famous sonnet, Ozymandias. It was during these years that Shelley, already an accomplished and practiced poet with three volumes of published verse, authored two major volumes, earned international recognition, and became part of the circle that was later called the Younger Romantics. As with previous volumes, extensive discussions of the poems’ composition, influences, publication, circulation, reception, and critical history accompany detailed records of textual variants for each work. Among the appendixes are Mary W. Shelley’s 1839 notes on the poems for these years, a table of the forty-two revisions made to Laon and Cythna for its reissue as The Revolt of Islam, and Shelley’s errata list for the same. It is in the works included in this volume that the recognizable and characteristic voice of Shelley emerges—unmistakable, consistent, and vital.