SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe.
Queen Mab. London, W. Clark, 1821.
8vo, pp. 182; without dedication leaf and terminal advertisement leaf, as is often the case; otherwise a good, clean copy in recent blue morocco-backed boards with drab sides, spine lettered directly in gilt.
First published edition, a piracy second only to the privately printed edition of 1813, of Shelley’s most provocative poem.
The radical bookseller and pirate William Clark came across a copy of the privately printed first edition in 1821 and brought out this unauthorized text, ‘studious in adhering to the original copy’, printing the notes in French, Latin, and Greek in their original language, but helpfully providing a translation for the general reader (as stated in his notice on p. [92]). There were in fact two versions of Clark’s text, one (as here) with some of the more aggressive passages expurgated, the other printing the poem and notes complete. For his pains Clark, described by Shelley as ‘one of the low booksellers in the Strand’, was prosecuted by the Society for the Prevention of Vice and imprisoned for four months.
Unintentionally Shelley had reached a new audience through Clark’s and other piracies. Queen Mab became the most widely read of Shelley’s poems, and in later years an inspiration for the Chartists.
Buxton Forman 22; Granniss 19.