The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume III (1914) compiles some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s best-known works as a leading poet, playwright, and political thinker of the nineteenth century. As a leading figure among the English Romantics, Shelley was a master of poetic form and tradition who recognized the need for radical change in the social order. His work has influenced such writers and intellectuals as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, W. B. Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. In this final volume of Shelley’s collected works, the poet’s skill as a translator is on full display. Included within are translations from the Greek of Homer and Plato, from the Latin of Vergil, from the Spanish of Calderon, from the German of Goethe, and from the Italian of Dante, to name only a few. In addition, The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume III contains some of Shelley’s earliest works as a poet, such as Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire-written with his sister and originally published in 1810-and other examples of juvenilia. Many of these poems remained unpublished upon Shelley’s death, including Eyes: A Fragment, which made its first appearance in an 1870 edition of Shelley’s works published by William Michael Rossetti. In this poem, a deceptively simple lyric, Shelley conflates language and vision to capture the communication made possible only through silence, which allows one look [to] light a waste of years, / Darting the beam that conquers cares / Through the cold shower of tears. In these fragments, songs, translations, and youthful verses, Shelley demonstrates his workmanlike ability with language, a tirelessness fueled with a passion as thrilling as it must be rare. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume III is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.
