William Michael Rossetti’s Copy
[SHELLEY.] MEDWIN, Thomas.
The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley … In two Volumes. London, Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847.
Two vols in one, 8vo, pp. ix, [3], 384; [4], 368, with a facsimile letter as a frontispiece; some foxing but a good copy in contemporary green morocco, gilt, edges rubbed, spine worn and sunned; ownership inscription of William Michael Rossetti dated 1868/9, a few minor pencil annotations, not in his hand.
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The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley … In two Volumes.
First edition of the first substantial biography of Shelley, from the library of William Michael Rossetti, whose own ‘Memoir’ of Shelley would largely supersede it.
William Michael and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were ‘reading and re-reading’ Shelley as early as 1844, but it wasn’t until the late 1860s that William considered the need for a new edition of Shelley’s poems, writing a series of articles to the effect in Notes & Queries. He was commissioned to prepare an annotated edition with a ‘Memoir’ in early 1869, and Medwin was an important source. See Harris Chewning, ‘William Michael Rossetti and the Shelley Renaissance’, Keats-Shelley Journal 4.