English 965: The Shelley Circle
English 965: The Shelley Circle
Spring 2015
Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews Hall
402.472.1806
office: 11-12, 2-3 TR
and by appointment
Percy Bysshe Shelley -- A Selective Bibliography
Stephen C. Behrendt, Spring 2015
Facsimiles and Transcriptions
NOTE: Garland Press is currently publishing, under the careful editorial supervision of Donald H. Reiman (the dean of Shelley’s textual editors), a series of facsimile reproductions of the Shelley manuscripts housed principally in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The photo-reproductions are revealing, though often difficult to read, and the transcriptions are carefully done. For textual studies of Shelley’s work, these facsimiles will enable scholars to pursue all but the most thoroughgoing inquiries in a variety of accessible academic libraries, rather than having to go to Oxford (or London, New York, Cambridge MA, or San Marino CA) to do their work. This series is The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts (BSM); it presently comprises 23 volumes.
For facsimiles of still other Shelley manuscripts, see another evolving series: The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics: Shelley. 9 vols. Donald H. Reiman, General Editor. New York: Garland, 1985-97:
Vol I: The Esdaile Notebook (1985)
Vol. II: The Mask of Anarchy (1985)
Vol. III: Hellas (1985
Vol. IV: The Mask of Anarchy Draft Notebook (1990)
Vol. V: The Harvard Shelley Poetic Manuscripts (1991)
Vol. VI: Shelley’s 1819-1821 Huntington Notebook (1994)
Vol. VII: Shelley’s 1821-1822 Huntington Notebook (1996)
Vol. VIII: Fair-Copy Manuscripts of Shelley’s Poems in European and American Libraries (1997)
Vol. IX: The Frankenstein Notebooks (1996)
Editions, including Critical Editions
Rossetti, William Michael, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London: Edward Moxon, 1870. Revised and reissued in three volumes in 1878.
Forman, Harry Buxton, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 4 vols. London: Reeves and Turner, 1876.
Forman, Harry Buxton, ed. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 4 vols. London: Reeves and Turner, 1880.
Hutchinson, Thomas, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904. This was the basis for the Oxford Standard Authors text of Shelley’s poems, later corrected by G. M. Matthews (in 1970). Recent study of Shelley’s manuscripts and recently discovered materials have rendered Hutchinson’s volume largely outdated.
Locock, C. D., ed. The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with an Introduction by A. Clutton-Brock. 2 vols. London: Methuen, 1911, Unreliable.
Ingpen, Roger, and Walter E. Peck, eds. The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 10 vols. London: Ernest Benn, 1926-30. [reprinted by the Gordian Press]. This is usually cited as the “Julian” edition of Shelley’s works. Only the volumes containing Shelley’s prose (V-VII) are of real value, as the others have been superseded by more modern editions. A new edition of the prose works is being issued by Oxford University Press under the editorship of E. B. Murray (see below). This new Oxford edition should be used for all scholarly purposes.
Clark, David Lee, ed. Shelley’s Prose: or, The Trumpet of a Prophecy. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1954. Generally unreliable in most textual respects; it copies the Ingpen-Peck edition, even reproducing the errors from that edition. Like the Ingpen-Peck edition, it is superseded by the new Oxford text edited by E. B. Murray. Clark’s historical and contextual notes are useful, even if not entirely reliable.
Zillman, Lawrence John, ed. Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound”: A Variorum Edition. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1959 [reedited version printed in 1969].
Cameron, Kenneth Neill, and Donald H. Reiman, eds. Shelley and his Circle: 1773-1822. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1961-87. An excellent, carefully annotated guide to materials in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library (now part of the New York Public Library).
Chernaik, Judith. The Lyrics of Shelley. Cleveland: P of Case Western Reserve U, 1972. Most of the excellent transcriptions those previously available in collections like the Hutchinson/Matthews Oxford Standard Authors Volume.
Rogers, Neville, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon P. Projected as four volumes. The first volume (1972) is so badly done, and so unreliable in all aspects, as to be worse than useless. The second volume (1975) is better, and is only dreadful. For most purposes, use Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, edited by Reiman and Fraistat; for more advanced purposes, use one of the definitive multi-volume modern scholarly editions..
Matthews, G. M. And Kelvin Everest, eds. The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Longman, 1989-. The first four volumes in a what is now projected as a longer multi-volume edition of Shelley’s poems. Matthews and Everest are skilled editors and insightful commentators, and their subsequent co-editors are no less skillful.
Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat, et al. The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000- . This is likely to become the definitive edition, owing to its extraordinary editorial apparatus and extensive commentary. The first three volumes are now in print; the edition will probably run to at least seven large volumes.
Reiman, Donald H. and Neil Fraistat, eds. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Though not a “complete text,” this volume, prepared by the most careful of Shelley’s textual editors, provides generally the most reliable texts for all of the poems--and the several essays--which it contains. This selected edition supplements the Complete Edition of the poetry which is being edited by Reiman and Fraistat and published by Johns Hopkins UP.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. Longman Cultural Edition. New York: Longman, 2009.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Esdaile Notebook: A Volume of Early Poems, ed. Kenneth Neill Cameron, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1964. The best “complete” source for the letters, though Jones’s transcriptions are often faulty. When possible, double-check against more recent works like Shelley and his Circle, which are more reliable editorially.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. E. B. Murray. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1993-. Volume I appeared in 1993. This meticulously prepared scholarly edition immediately supersedes all previous editions. When complete (in two volumes), this will be the most authoritative edition of the prose. The notes are extraordinarily helpful, even to the point of indicating textual problems which the editor has not been able to solve to his own satisfaction.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. Peterborough, ONT: Broadview, 2002. Shelley’s two early efforts in the genre of the prose Gothic romance; among his earliest publications. Includes Shelley’s other works in prose fiction, plus supplementary materials.
Reference and Bibliographical works
Ellis, F. S. A Lexical Concordance to the Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1892. NOTE: This is a useful concordance, but it does not include all of Shelley’s poetry.
Hall, Spencer, ed. Approaches to Teaching Shelley’s Poetry. New York: MLA, 1990. Excellent collection of brief essays specifically addressing pedagogical matters.
Hayden, John O. Romantic Bards and British Reviewers. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1971. A guide to and synopsis of major contemporary reviews of the five traditional canonical Romantic poets.
Hogle, Jerrold E. “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” in Literature of the Romantic Period: A Bibliographical Guide. Ed. Michael O’Neill. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1998. Recent and well selected.
Keats-Shelley Journal, “Current Bibliography.” Complete bibliography of the Shelley circle, published annually.
Keats-Shelley Review. Formerly the Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin. The chief specialized British journal on the Keats-Shelley circle.
O’Neill, Michael, and Anthony Howe, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. Important, foundational collection of essays by some of the most important modern Shelley scholars.
Redpath, Theodore. The Young Romantics and Critical Opinion, 1807-1824. London: Harrap, 1973. Like the Hayden (above), a collection, with editorial commentary, of contemporary reviews; this one focuses specifically on Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
Reiman, Donald H. English Romantic Poetry, 1880-1835: A Guide to Information Sources. Detroit: Gale Research, 1979.
Reiman, Donald H., ed. The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of the British Romantic Writers. 5 vols. New York: Garland, 1972. An extremely useful source, though frequently hard on the eyes: reproduces virtually all contemporary reviews and includes capsule summaries of their authors (where known) and profiles of the periodicals in which they appeared. The advantage is that entire reviews are reproduced, rather than only excerpts. Reiman’s notes and commentary are very helpful.
Schmid, Susanne, and Michael Rossington, eds. The Reception of P. B. Shelley in Europe. London: Continuum, 2008. A collection of essays that examine the publication history and both the history of Percy Shelley’s reputation in Europe, from his lifetime to the present, organized by individual countries or regions and prepared by expert scholars.
Sullivan, Alvin, ed. British Literary Magazines: The Romantic Age, 1789-1836. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1983. An excellent guide to the nature and substance of literary periodicals of the period. This is Volume 2; volume 1, which ostensibly covers the Augustan age, includes periodicals from the Romantic period which began publishing before 1789. Volumes covering the Victorian era also exist.
Some Biographical materials
Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography. Neward: U of Delaware P, 2004-05. An interesting psychologically oriented biography, though occasionally unreliable or ill-informed, by a former professor of Psychology and a lifetime Shelley scholar
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical. New York: Macmillan, 1950.
Clairmont, Mary Jane Clara [Claire]. The Journals of Claire Clairmont. ed. Marion Kingston Stocking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1968.
Dowden, Edward. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1886; revised and issued is one volume, 1896. This is the first “official” biography, commissioned by Lady Shelley and very careful both in what is reported and how it is reported.
Gisborne, Maria, and Edward E. Williams. Maria Gisborne and Edward E. Williams, Shelley’s Friends: Their Journals and Letters, ed. Frederick L. Jones. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1951. An interesting source of information, written “from the inside” by friends of Shelley in his last years.
Hayden, John O. The Romantic Reviewers, 1802-1824. London, 1969.
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London: Edward Moxon, 1858. Retrospective biography by Shelley's Oxford roommate and subsequent friend.
Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. A long and detailed but rather slanted, “popularized,” and frequently unsympathetic biography which is not always reliable.
Hunt, Leigh. Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries. London: Henry Colburn, 1828. See also Hunt’s Autobiography (1850). Hunt was one of Shelley’s closest friends; as a result he is sometimes guided more by affection and enthusiasm than by accuracy. Nevertheless, his insights are valuable.
Ingpen, Roger. Shelley in England. London: Kegan Paul and Trench, 1917.
Medwin, Thomas. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847. Medwin was Shelley’s cousin; his accounts are not always reliable, but he does supply much information not available elsewhere. Like Hunt and Trelawny, Medwin is best read with a copy of Newman Ivey White’s Shelley close at hand to maintain touch with demonstrable facts.
Peacock, Thomas Love. Memoirs of Shelley and Other Essays and Reviews, ed. Howard Mills. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1970. The satirical novelist and author of Nightmare Abbey (1818), a thinly veiled fictional account of the Shelley circle, Peacock was another of Shelley's best friends.
Peck, Walter E. Shelley: His Life and Work. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927. Another large book which is not always reliable.
St. Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991. A very good source for the larger Shelley circle and for generally reliable information about relations among the members of this extended family.
Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844. ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Oxford; Clarendon P, 1988. An extremely careful and copiously annotated edition which supersedes that of Frederick L. Jones. A wealth of information about the Shelleys’ daily activities, including their reading.
-----. The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. ed. Betty T. Bennett. 3 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988. The definitive edition. Another goldmine of information, although Mary Shelley was continually--and increasingly--prone to mythologizing her husband.
Trelawny, Edward John. Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1878. A predictably dashing--but often mythologized and unreliable--account of the latter years of Shelley’s life, by the man who plucked the poet’s heart from the funeral pyre.
White, Newman Ivey. Shelley. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940. Despite its vintage, this is in most respects the standard and most accurate biography of Shelley.
Wroe, Anne. Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Himself. New York: Random House, 2007. A controversial but wonderfully readable biography focused on Shelley’s ongoing quest to discover his true self and his poetic and spiritual identity.
Major critical studies
Allott, Miriam, ed. Essays on Shelley. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1982. A good collection which reflects contemporary interests.
Baker, Carlos. Shelley’s Major Poetry: The Fabric of a Vision. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1948.
Behrendt, Stephen C. Shelley and his Audiences. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. A study of Shelley’s rhetoric that contextualizes his expectations about the diverse audiences to which he directed his works in prose and verse.
-----. “’The Consequence of High Powers’: Blake, Shelley, and Prophecy’s Public Dimension,” Papers on Language and Literature 22 (1986), 254-75.
-----. “The History of Shelley Editions in English.” in Schmid and Rossington, The Reception of P. B. Shelley in Europe (2008), 9-25.
-----. “‘Peter Bell the Third’: Contempt and Poetic Transfiguration.” in Weinberg and Webb, The Unfamiliar Shelley (2009), 101-18.
-----. “Shelley and His Publishers.” in O’Neill and Howe, The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013), 83-97.
Bennett, Betty T. and Stuart Curran, eds. Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. A bicentenary collection of 23 essays on all aspects of Shelley’s work and influence.
Blank, G. Kim. Wordsworth’s Influence on Shelley: A Study of Poetic Authority. New York: St. Martin’s, 1988. Examines the ways in which Shelley’s works reformulate both Wordsworth’s texts and his precursor influence on the younger poet. Very good model of a detailed influence study.
Bloom, Harold. Shelley’s Mythmaking. New Haven: Yale UP, 1959. Increasingly regarded as overrated and misleading.
Brown, Nathaniel. Sexuality and Feminism in Shelley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Shelley: The Golden Years. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1974. Excellent and detailed.
Claridge, Laura. Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire. Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1992. An essentially Lacanian reading that addresses W. Wordsworth, P. B. Shelley, and Byron in particular.
Clark, Timothy. Embodying Revolution: The Figure of the Poet in Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1989.
Cronin, Richard. Shelley’s Poetic Thoughts. New York: St. Martin’s, 1981. Particularly strong analysis of the structure and language of Shelley’s poetry.
Curran, Stuart. Shelley’s Annus Mirabilis: The Maturing of an Epic Vision. San Marino, CA: Henry E. Huntington Library, 1975. Focuses principally upon the poems of 1819-20.
-----. Shelley’s Cenci: Scorpions Ringed with Fire. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970.
Dawson, P. M. S. The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1980. Excellent study of the political dimensions of Shelley’s writings.
DeMan, Paul. “Shelley Disfigured,” in Deconstruction and Criticism, ed. Harold Bloom et al. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. Deconstructive reading of “The Triumph of Life”; an important (if dismaying) deconstructive approach to the last major text of the poet with whose works many deconstructive critics are particularly taken.
Engelberg, Karsten Klejs. The Making of the Shelley Myth: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1822-1860. London: Mansell, 1988. An interesting study of the making of a reputation; useful for its insights on reading contemporary historical and pseudo-historical source materials.
Everest, Kelvin, ed. Shelley Revalued: Essays from the Gregynog Conference. Leicester: Leicester UP, 1983. Another good collection of modern critical essays.
Farnell, Gary. “Rereading Shelley,” ELH 60 (1993), 625-51. Argues that the shell image that recurs frequently in Shelley’s poetry points to the presence of important embedded autobiographical material.
Ferriss, Suzanne. “Reflections in a ‘Many-Sided Mirror’: Shelley’s The Cenci through the Post-Revolutionary Prism,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 15 (1991), 161-70.
Foot, Paul. Red Shelley. London: Bookmarks, 1984. An energetic, albeit extremely biased, account of Shelley from a radical Marxist perspective.
Fraistat, Neil. “Poetic Quests and Questioning in Shelley’s Alastor Collection,” Keats-Shelley Journal 33 (1984), 161-81.
Gelpi, Barbara Charlesworth. Shelley’s Goddess: Maternity, Language, Subjectivity. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Psychoanalytical study of Shelley’s place in the broad subject of motherhood and mother-child relationships in literature.
Hammond, Eugene R. “Beatrice’s Three Fathers: Successive Betrayal in Shelley’s The Cenci,” Essays in Literature 8 (1981), 25-32.
Hoagwood, Terence Allan. Skepticism and Ideology: Shelley’s Political Prose and Its Philosophical Context from Bacon to Marx. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1988. An expansive book, as indicated by its title, it occasionally sacrifices detailed discussion for rhetorical flourish and broad coverage.
Hogle, Jerrold E. Shelley’s Process: Radical Transference and the Development of His Major Works. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. A complex, challenging, and insightful poststructuralist reading; a good antidote to Paul DeMan’s breezy dismissal of Shelley.
Jones, Steven E. Shelley’s Satire: Violence, Exhortation, and Authority. DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1994. An excellent study of Shelley’s use of satire.
Keach, William. Shelley’s Style. London: Methuen, 1984. Quite simply the best book on the subject.
Kipperman, Mark. “History and Ideality: The Politics of Shelley’s ‘Hellas’,” Studies in Romanticism 30 (1991), 147-69.
Kucich, Greg. Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1991. A good study of this insufficiently explored relationship that was important to most of the Romantic poets. Robert Gleckner has an important parallel book on Blake, Blake and Spenser.
Leighton, Angela. Shelley and the Sublime: An Interpretation of the Major Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.
McNiece, Gerald. Shelley and the Revolutionary Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1969.
Morton, Timothy. Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. An extraordinarily well done study of Shelly and vegetarianism, set within the broader cultural context of his times.
Notopoulos, James A. The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1949. Probably still he best source for Shelley’s translations of some of Plato’s works.
O’Neill, Michael. The Human Mind’s Imaginings: Conflict and Achievement in Shelley’s Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1989. Wide-ranging and intelligent assessment of Shelley’s poetry.
Pulos, C. E. The Deep Truth: A Study of Shelley’s Skepticism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1954.
Reiman, Donald H. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Boston: Twayne, 1969; revised and updated edition: Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990. Like most of the volumes in the Twayne series, this is a brief introduction and overview, rather than a detailed critical study. Being by Reiman, however, it is very well done.
Richardson, Donna. “An Anatomy of Solitude: Shelley’s Response to Radical Skepticism in ‘Alastor’,” Studies in Romanticism 31 (1992), 171-96. Examines an early instance of Shelley’s simultaneous problematizing of the quest for absolute knowledge and the rationalization of human ignorance.
Roberts, Hugh. Shelley and the Chaos of History: A New Politics of Poetry. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997. An important and densely argued examination of Shelley's conception of history.
Robinson, Charles E. Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. Perhaps still the best critical study of the relation of these two authors and friends.
Scrivener, Michael Henry. Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982. Excellent and well informed about the poetry and its contemporary political and philosophical contexts.
Sperry, Stuart. Shelley’s Major Verse: The Narrative and Dramatic Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988. Excellent.
Tetreault, Ronald. The Poetry of Life: Shelley and Literary Form. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1987.
Ulmer, William Andrew. Shelleyan Eros: The Rhetoric of Romantic Love. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.
Wasserman, Earl R. Shelley: A Critical Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1971. An extremely dense and detailed critical study; difficult reading at best, but worth the effort.
Webb, Timothy. Shelley: A Voice Not Understood. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1977.
-----. The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and Translation. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1976. After a quarter of a century, this is still the best study of Shelley as a translator.
Weinberg, Alan M. and Timothy Webb, eds. The Unfamiliar Shelley. Farnham, Ashgate, 2009. A collection of essays by major Shelley scholars examining some of Shelley's less well known poetry and prose.
Weisman, Karen A. Imageless Truths: Shelley’s Poetic Fictions. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994.
Wheatley, Kim. Shelley and His Readers: Beyond Paranoid Politics. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1999. Examines the dialogues in which Shelley engages his reviewers.
Young, Art. Shelley and Nonviolence. The Hague: Mouton, 1975. Promises more than it delivers.
Shelley and the context of his times; political, social, and intellectual
Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.
Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957.
Bamford, Samuel. Passages in the Life of A Radical (1842). Conveniently published in an edition edited by Tim Hilton. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.
Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. History and Myth: Essays on English Romantic Literature. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1989.
Butler, Marily., Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background, 1760-1830. Oxford. Oxford UP, 1982. Excellent cultural and historical background; an early New Historicist assessment that poses a counter-case to the romantic notion of Romanticism as fully liberal.
Chandler, James. England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. A brilliant – if occasionally frustrating – New Historical study of how Shelley and his contemporaries viewed themselves as participants in and shapers of history.
Curran, Stuart, ed. The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Excellent collection of background, contextual essays, with a chronology and a good bibliography. Revised second edition, 2010.
Engell, James. The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981.
Erickson, Carolly. Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England. New York: William Morrow, 1986. A good, readable history.
Everest, Kelvin, ed. English Romantic Poetry: An Introduction to the Historical Context and the Literary Scene.
Fraistat, Neil. The Poem and the Book: Interpreting Collections of Romantic Poetry. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985. Explores the dynamics of volumes of Romantic poetry, rather than just individual poems; the focus in the case of Shelley is on the Prometheus Unbound and Other Poems volume.
Gaull, Marilyn. English Romanticism: The Human Context. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. An extremely useful cultural background to the Romantic period generally.
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848. London, 1962.
Honour, Hugh, Romanticism. London, 1982.
Kelly, Gary. English Fiction of the Romantic Period, 1789-1830. London: Longman, 1989.
Levinson, Marjorie. The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. A major investigation, by an important New Historicist critic, of the art and aesthetics of the “fragment” as a form.
Low, Donald A. That Sunny Dome: A Portrait of Regency Britain. London: Dent, 1977. Perhaps the best and most readable introduction to the Regency context.
-----. Thieves’ Kitchen: The Regency Underworld. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1987. A fascinating and readable examination of the rich and varied underworld--the “low” and criminal side of England (London especially)--against which “high” Regency life needs properly to be measured.
McGann, Jerome J. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. This study stirred up considerable controversy when it appeared and it continues to spark debate; interesting if not always on track.
Mellor, Anne. Romanticism and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993. Extremely important; the first fully articulated assessment of “feminine Romanticism” and its implications for our understanding of Romanticism(s) generally.
Paulson, Ronald. Representations of Revolution, 1789-1820. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983. Very fine interdisciplinary study by the preeminent expert on William Hogarth --- which means in this case an unusually perceptive and sophistiocated interdisciplinary unerstanding of the workings of public culture.
Priestley, J. B. The Prince of Pleasure and His Regency. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. A splendid illustrated book that captures well the nature and spirit of the Regency and the reign of George IV.
Purkis, John. The World of the English Romantic Poets: A Visual Approach. London: Heinemann, 1982.
Rajan, Tilottama. Dark Interpreter: The Discourse of Romanticism. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1987. A fine, theortically sophisticated deconstructive study.
-----. The Supplement of Reading: Figures of Understanding in Romantic Theory and Practice. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990. Interesting sequel to Dark Interpreter.
Rickword, Edgell. Radical Squibs & Royal Ripostes: Satirical Pamphlets of the Regency Period, 1819-1821. Illustrated by George Cruikshank and Others, ed. Edgell Rickword. Somerset [sic]: Adams and Dart, 1971. Great source for the rich and robust visual culture of Regency satire, particularly the caricature print and the Radical press.
Royle, Edward, and James Walvin. English Radicals and Reformers, 1760-1848. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1982.
Thorslev, Peter L., Jr. Romantic Contraries: Freedom versus Destiny. New Haven: Yale UP, 1984.
Twitchell, James B. Romantic Horizons: Aspects of the Sublime in English Poetry and Painting, 1770-1850. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1983.
Woodring, Carl. Politics in English Romantic Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970. A good overview of the general topic, as well as of its manifestations in the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron in particular.