Shelley's College-Age Angst Rediscovered

A pamphlet by Percy Shelley, written while he was a student at Oxford and long believed lost, has been acquired by Oxford's Bodleian Library. The physical copy is on display until December. According to Oxford, Shelley's youthful verses "remain as relevant today as they were 200 years ago." More, via the Guardian:

An incendiary lost poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in which the young poet attacks the “cold advisers of yet colder kings” who “coolly sharpen misery’s sharpest fang … regardless of the poor man’s pang”, was made public for the first time in more than 200 years on Tuesday.

Shelley was just 18 and in his first year at Oxford University when he wrote his Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. The 172-line poem, accompanied by an essay and Shelley’s notes, was written in support of the Irish journalist Peter Finnerty, who had been jailed for libelling the Anglo-Irish politician Viscount Castlereagh.

Printed in 1811 by a stationers on Oxford High Street, under the alias of “a gentleman of the University of Oxford”, it was only attributed to Shelley 50 years after his death, when copies were already said to be impossible to find. The work was considered lost until it was rediscovered in a private collection in 2006, and has only been viewed by a handful of scholars since.

Now the 20-page printed pamphlet – the only known copy of the text in existence – has been acquired by the Bodleian Library for an undisclosed sum. The library has digitised the text to make it available to the general public for the first time. It will display the physical copy, which is the 12 millionth book to join its collections, until December.

[...]

“This substantial poem has been known about for years, but as far as we know it hasn’t been read by any Shelley biographers or scholars since it was composed, and people are intrigued to find out exactly what it’s about,” said Rossington.

In the poem, Shelley calls for “a total reform in the licentiousness, luxury, depravity, prejudice, which involve society”. [...]

Continue reading at the Guardian.