Adonais by Percy Bysshe Shelley
page 42 of 186 (22%)
page 42 of 186 (22%)
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of August, 1821, purchasable by whoever might be minded to buy it. Very
soon afterwards it was reprinted in the _Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review_, published by Limbird in the Strand--1 December, 1821: a rather singular, not to say piratical, proceeding. An editorial note was worded thus: 'Through the kindness of a friend, we have been favoured with the latest production of a gentleman of no ordinary genius, Mr. Bysshe Shelley. It is an elegy on the death of a youthful poet of considerable promise, Mr. Keats, and was printed at Pisa. As the copy now before us is perhaps [surely not] the only one that has reached England, and the subject is one that will excite much interest, we shall print the whole of it.' This promise was not literally fulfilled, for stanzas 19 to 24 were omitted, not apparently with any special object. After the publication in London of the Pisan edition of _Adonais_, the poem remained unreprinted until 1829. It was then issued at Cambridge, at the instance of Lord Houghton (Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes) and Mr. Arthur Hallam, the latter having brought from Italy a copy of the original pamphlet. The Cambridge edition, an octavo in paper wrappers, is now still scarcer than the Pisan one. The only other separate edition of _Adonais_ was that of Mr. Buxton Forman, 1876, corresponding substantially with the form which the poem assumes in the _Complete Works of Shelley_, as produced by the same editor. It need hardly be said that _Adonais_ was included in Mrs. Shelley's editions of her husband's Poems, and in all other editions of any fulness: it has also appeared in most of the volumes of Selections. As early as 1830 there was an Italian translation of this Elegy. It is named _Adone, nella morte di Giovanni Keats, Elegia di Percy Bishe Shelley, tradotta da L. A. Damaso Pareto_. _Genova, dalla Tifografia Pellas_, 1830. In this small quarto thirty pages are occupied by a |
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