Pickering & Chatto :: Pickering & Chatto

Pickering & ChattoEvery Romanticist is heavily indebted to Pickering & Chatto for their publication of a series of valuable sets of Romantic texts. From the industrial plant of Mary Wollstonecraft (published in 1989), to the Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley (published in May 1996), and continuing with forthcoming editions of Hazlitts and De Quinceys Selected Works, Pickering & Chatto continues to foster the study of Romantic writers with excellent scholarly editions. Under the prevalent editorship of John Mullan, Pickering & Chatto offers us a new collection in their series of Romantic studies publications Lives of the Great Romantic Poets . This three- plenty set contains facsimile copys of biographical accounts of three major poets of the Romantic period Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth. Each volume contains a clearly-written introduction which presents an overall picture of the poets career and popularity during his lifetime. Though unfortunately limited by space conside rations, the editors contract succeeded in compiling intelligent accounts of the poets. A selected, and rather brief, bibliography of useful secondary works and a brief chronology are also to be found. Each selection of biographical writing is preceded by a short editors introduction containing details ab divulge the author, the work from which the extract is taken, and the relationship between the author and the poet referred to. These introductions are straightforward, with plenteous details to improve the reading of the extracts without overwhelming the reader with too many facts. I have to stress the fact that this edition is a facsimile reproduction of extracts from Romantic texts and not a scholarly edition of these texts. Thus, although one finds a few notes, one should be aware that the interest of these volumes lies mainly in the texts they take form newly available to the public. In this, this edition echoes the Revolution and Romanticism series of facsimile of Romantic texts chosen by Jonathan Wordsworth and published by Woodstock Books. The first volume is devoted to Shelley and edited by John Mullan. Mullans introduction presents an accurate description of the difficult question of the reception of Shelley during the nineteenth century, and then during the twentieth century. Mullan rightly points out how tempting it is to equate Shelleys poetry with his own life, and how, to a certain extent, Shelley himself invited his readers to do so. This is obviously a question that Shelleyan scholars have dealt with for over a century.