In placing Queen Mab at the head of the Juvenilia I have followed the arrangement adopted by Mr. Buxton Forman in his Library Edition of 1876. I have excluded The Wandering Jew, having failed to satisfy myself of the sufficiency of the grounds on which, in certain quarters, it is accepted as the work of Shelley. The shorter fragments are printed, as in Professor Dowden’s edition of 1890, along with the miscellaneous poems of the years to which they severally belong, under titles which are sometimes borrowed from Mr. Buxton Forman. sometimes of my own choosing. I have added a few brief Editor’s Notes, mainly on textual questions, at the end of the book. Of the poverty of my work in this direction I am painfully aware; but in the present edition the ordinary reader will, it is hoped, find an authentic, complete, and accurately printed text, and, if this be so, the principal end and aim of the Oxford Shelley will have been attained.
I desire cordially to acknowledge the courtesy of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., by whose kind sanction the second part of The Daemon of the World appears in this volume. And I would fain express my deep sense of obligation for manifold information and guidance, derived from Mr. Buxton Forman’s various editions, reprints and other publications—especially from the monumental Library Edition of 1876. Acknowledgements are also due to the poet’s grandson, Charles E. J. Esdaile, Esq., for permission to include the early poems first printed in Professor Dowden’s Life of Shelley; and to Mr. C. D. Locock, for leave to make full use of the material contained in his interesting and stimulating volume. To Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B., and to Professor Dowden, cordial thanks are hereby tendered for good counsel cheerfully bestowed. To two of the editors of the Shelley Society Reprints, Mr. Thomas J. Wise and Mr. Robert A. Potts—both generously communicative collectors—I am deeply indebted for the gift or loan of scarce volumes, as well as for many kind offices in other ways. Lastly, to the staff of the Oxford University Press my heartiest thanks are owing, for their unremitting care in all that relates to the printing and correcting of the sheets.
December, 1904.
Postscript.—In a valuable paper, ‘Notes on Passages in Shelley,’ contributed to The Modern Language Review (October, 1905), Mr. A. C. Bradley discussed, amongst other things, some fifty places in the text of Shelley’s verse, and indicated certain errors and omissions in this edition. With the aid of these Notes the editor has now carefully revised the text, and has in many places adopted the suggestions or conclusions of their accomplished author.
June, 1913.
