Shelley and His Circle, 1773-1822

An essential collection of writings penned by the most celebrated figures of the Romantic era, presented in an authoritative two-volume set.

Volumes IX and X of Shelley and His Circle offer insights into both Shelley’s youth and his later Italian exile, painting an especially vivid picture of the political and personal crises that dominated his life in the critical year of 1820.

Volume IX features a retrospective on the young Shelley, bringing together his unpublished early letters from 1809–1810, a memorandum book that he kept at Eton, a libelous verse-letter about his parents, and other works predating his Italian exile. This backward glance also includes the only known exchange between Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay, William Godwin’s first letter to Malthus, and a partial draft of Mary Shelley’s Proserpine, complete with edits made by her husband.

Volume X chronicles Shelley’s Italian residence from July through December 1820. In this period of political unrest, the letters of Leigh Hunt, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and Countess Teresa Guiccioli reflect preoccupation with Queen Caroline’s “trial” for adultery in Britain and with brewing revolutions in Italy. Other highlights include the press copy of Byron’s verse drama Marino Faliero, a young British officer’s reminiscences of Shelley in 1814, and the young architect Henry Reveley’s testimony about the Circle. Together, the materials illuminate the Circle’s impassioned engagement with the political discourse of the times.