This fantastic volume contains a collection of Thomas Love Peacock's best essays and reviews, including his "Memoirs of Shelley," a unique and insightful biography of his close friend Percy Bysshe Shelley. Contents include: "Memoirs of Shelley," "Part I," "Part II," "Supplementary Notes," "An Essay on Fashionable Literature," "The Four Ages of Poetry," "Jefferson's Memoirs," "Essays on Musical Subjects," "French Comic Romances," "The Epicier," "The Last Day of Windsor Forest," etc. Thomas Love Peacock (1785 - 1866) was an English poet, novelist, and important figure in the East India Company. A good friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, they both had a significant influence on each other's work. Peacock was most famous for writing satirical novels, which usually involved characters sat around a table discussing contemporary philosophical ideas. Other notable works by this author include: "Maid Marian" (1822), "Gryll Grange" (1861), and "Melincourt" (1817). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

The publication of Volumes III and IV of Shelley and His Circle under the editorial auspices of Kenneth Neill Cameron makes available a further portion of the Shelley manuscript materials in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library. These two volumes continue in the format and style of Volumes I and II, which received the critical acclaim of, among others, John Ciardi, who lauded Cameron and his contributing editors for rescuing "the material from felonious footnotery primarily by enclosing it in a continuous narrative that contains detailed introductions to each of the characters of the circle, and a general background of their relationships and of the times." Volumes III and IV progress chronologically through Shelley's life, beginning with the early years of Shelley's marriage to Harriet Westbrook, where Volume II ended, and concluding with her suicide. Among the manuscripts are twelve letters and literary pieces by Byron including the first of his "separation" poem "Fare Thee Well," the expanded 1814 journal of Claire Clairmont, the curious triangular correspondence of Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Shelley's annotated copy of Queen Mab, and the suicide letter Harriet Shelley wrote a few hours before she drowned in the Serpentine. A number of maps especially prepared for this edition and other supplementary illustrations enhance the impeccable scholarship of these volumes which, with the projected publication of the remaining materials, will present a half century of interconnected biographies and will suggest the literary and intellectual tenor of the Romantic era. The Pforzheimer collection, exceeded only by that at the Bodleian in the number of Shelley and Shelleyana manuscripts, reflects the personal interests of Carl H. Pforzheimer, who put together one of the notable private libraries of modern times. Before his death in 1957, he planned the form of publication for his collection, designing it not only for the academic use of scholars but also as a stimulating and readable set for the enthusiastic layman.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.