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SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe. Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion Etc. Pisa: With the Types of Didot, 1821.
4o. Original blue wrappers, covers with printed border centering a basket of fruit, manuscript title label in a 19th-century hand on front wrapper (rebacked, rear cover renewed at top with loss of border); cloth folding case.
SHELLEY ON KEATS: "HE HAS OUTSOARED THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT"
FIRST EDITION, WITH ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. Shelley's moving elegy on the death of John Keats, in ringing Spenserian stazas, is prefaced by a bitter attack upon the critics of the Quarterly Review, whose harsh treatment of Endymion, Shelley believed, had hastened Keats' death. In June, Shelley had reported to Claire Clairmont that he was at work on the poem, which, he thought, was "better than anything I have yet written, and worthy both of him and of me." Mary Shelley later commented that Adonais was as much Shelley's own elegy as Keats's. Shelley considered it his most finely "wrought" poem and he took special care in its printing in Pisa. It is Shelley's only poem to have a second (London) edition in his lifetime. The book was handsomely printed at the poet's request in Pisa by an unidentified printer, and issued without half-title. Ashley V, pp. 78-79; Granniss 66-68; Grolier English 73; Hayward 229; Wise Shelley, pp. 59-60.
[Boxed with:] SHELLEY. Adonais. Ed. Thomas J. Wise. London: Shelley Society, 1886. 4o. Original boards. Revised edition, one of 250 copies.
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SHELLEY ON KEATS: "HE HAS OUTSOARED THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT"
FIRST EDITION, WITH ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. Shelley's moving elegy on the death of John Keats, in ringing Spenserian stazas, is prefaced by a bitter attack upon the critics of the Quarterly Review, whose harsh treatment of Endymion, Shelley believed, had hastened Keats' death. In June, Shelley had reported to Claire Clairmont that he was at work on the poem, which, he thought, was "better than anything I have yet written, and worthy both of him and of me." Mary Shelley later commented that Adonais was as much Shelley's own elegy as Keats's. Shelley considered it his most finely "wrought" poem and he took special care in its printing in Pisa. It is Shelley's only poem to have a second (London) edition in his lifetime. The book was handsomely printed at the poet's request in Pisa by an unidentified printer, and issued without half-title. Ashley V, pp. 78-79; Granniss 66-68; Grolier English 73; Hayward 229; Wise Shelley, pp. 59-60.
[Boxed with:] SHELLEY. Adonais. Ed. Thomas J. Wise. London: Shelley Society, 1886. 4