This volume contains one of the fullest, and certainly the most accurately edited, collections of Shelleyís poetry and prose available. All the texts have been re-edited from primary sources especially for this edition.

Included in the selection are four early poems from The Esdaile Notebook; Queen Mab, Alastor, "Mont Blanc," and "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"; "Lines Written among the Euganean Hills," Julian and Maddalo, Prometheus Unbound, "The Sensitive-Plant," The Cenci, Peter Bell the Third, "Letter to Maria Gisborne," "The Witch of Atlas," Epipsychidion, Adonais, Hellas, and The Triumph of Life (all complete), as well as such important shorter poems as "Ozymandias," "Ode to Liberty," "Ode to the West Wind," "The Cloud," "To a Sky-Lark," and the late lyrics to Jane Williams. There are also selections from Laon and Cyntha (The Revolt of Islam).

Prose pieces included are A Defence of Poetry, On Life, and On Love.

All the poems and prose pieces have been thoroughly annotated, with unusual diction defined and with all biographical, historical, geographical, and literary allusions identified (many of them for the first time anywhere).

To further assist the student and teacher, fifteen essays are included representing the best of scholarship and criticism on Shelleyís poetry. Among them are several general studies that illuminate the historical, philosophical, symbolic, and mythic approaches to the poetís work; a number of other essays assist the readerís entry into specific poems.

The critics represented are Kenneth Neill Cameron, C. E. Pulos, Earl R. Wasserman, Donald H. Reiman, Evan K. Gibson, Charles H. Vivian, M. H. Abrams, D. J. Hughes, Irene H. Chayes, Carlos Baker, Ross Woodman, Carl Woodring, and G. M. Matthews.

A Selected Bibliography and an Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.