Percy Bysshe Shelley published his Gothic romance, Zastrozzi, in 1810, while he was still at Eton. St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian appeared a year later. These sensationalist novels present some of Shelley's earliest mediations on the consequences of irresponsible self-indulgence and violent revenge. These themes, which characterize the major works of his later career as a poet, are present here already, where they give an important indication of the author's early thoughts on these matters.
This edition presents for the first time authentic texts of both of these romances, together with Shelley's other prose fiction fragments, his reviews of other novels by his contemporaries, and the text of a chapbook thriller called Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit, which was clearly plagiarized from St. Irvyne.
The edition also includes an extensive critical and contextual introduction and other scholarly apparatus.
Broadview Press, 2002.