SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE | Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion etc.. Pisa: With the Types of Didot, 1821

SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE

Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion etc.. Pisa: With the Types of Didot, 1821

4to (210 x 140 mm). Light foxing, inner margins extended. Red morocco gilt by Talin Bookbindery, top edges gilt, blue marble endpapers. Housed in a red morocco clamshell case. 

First edition of Shelley's elegy for Keats; the work he considered to be the "least imperfect" of his poems (he called it "worthy of both him and of me"). Printed at the author's request in Pisa by an unidentified printer, Shelley took great care in its production. The poem is prefaced by an attack on the critics of the Quarterly Review whose treatment of Endymion had, in Shelley's view, hastened Keats's death. It is Shelley's only poem to have a second (London) edition in his lifetime.

REFERENCES

Granniss 66; Hayward 229; Wise, A Shelley Library, pp.60-61

PROVENANCE

William H. Painter (booklabel)