Pirate Edition of Shelley’s Queen Mab, 1829

Description

Scarce copy of the 1829 pirate edition of Percy Shelley’s Queen Mab published by John Brooks.

Queen Mab A Philosophical Poem With Notes by Percy Shelley. John Brooks, London. 1829.

Percy Shelley’s first published work, Queen Mab (1813) served as a lyric treatise for his own developing philosophical sentiments which included radical sociopolitical positions for the period such as atheism. Considered by the author to be too unpolished for publication, of the original 250 copies printed in London by William Clark, only about a third entered circulation among Shelley’s friends and other poets, before it was reworked into The Daemon of The World in 1816.

In 1821, the remaining signatures of Queen Mab were rediscovered, with Clark passing along copies for resale to other booksellers. When news of the sale of these copies, distinguished by the later date and inclusion of the original inscription to the poet’s first wife Harriet, Shelley wrote the following public plea for its suppression to London’s Examiner newspaper on June 22:

I doubt not but that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that, in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political, and domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from literary vanity, as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of freedom.

Unable to have the sales declared illegal, Shelley’s efforts to criminalize the pirate copies eventually landed Clark in prison for “the publication of blasphemous libels” in December of 1821. The “victory” proved short lived when Shelley died on June 22, 1822.

Although Percy Shelley’s actions and his father’s interference in Mary Shelley’s editing and publishing of his remaining works kept Queen Mab from official, unrevised rereleases, public hunger for Shelley’s poems fueled a small industry of producing and selling further illegal copies based on Clark’s original signatures.

This pirate edition of Queen Mab produced in 1829 by publisher John Brooks is particularly interesting for its insights on pirate editing of the period and the growing cult of Shelley after his death. It combines the original dedication “To Harriet” with a memorial frontispiece showing Shelley’s corpse attended by a muse before a funeral pyre.

8vo, three-quarter bound with green boards and red leather spines. Edges rubbed with some leather loss. Raised bands, with gilt decoration on spine, covers with three rules and dentelles, marbled endpapers. Spine hinge of front board fragile, incomplete separation at top most and bottom most sections. Some chipping on spine. Complete with frontispiece showing Shelley’s funeral pyre. Contains dedication to Shelley’s first wife Harriet removed in later editions. Pages clean. Good condition.

 

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