Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 USD

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Description

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Adonais. An elegy on the Death of John Keats. Pisa: With the Types of Didot, 1821.
Paper, ink, leather

4to (236 x 181 mm). A few stray spots, else a fresh copy. Green morocco, gilt, by Bedford.

Provenance

Sotheby's New York, Dec 3, 2004, lot 231; Blairhame (bookplate); Cortlandt F. Bishop (bookplate)

Literature

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

Catalogue Note

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.