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Poetical Essay: a major Shelley discovery
In July 2006 an exciting announcement was made in the
national press, to the effect that a copy of a
hitherto unseen pamphlet by Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, had
been discovered; scholars and others with an interest
in the Romantics - and this poet in particular -
immediately sat up and took notice. The find was of
special relevance here in Horsham, not just because
Shelley was born at Field Place in nearby Warnham and
his family had a close connection with our town, but
more specifically because the newly-discovered
pamphlet had once been owned by Pilfold Medwin, a
cousin of Shelley's and a local solicitor, who is now
buried in Denne Road cemetery. His signature was on
the title page.
 Briefly,
the background to the find was as follows: an alert
book dealer, while sorting through a bundle of
miscellaneous items, took a second look at one in
particular and thought it might be worth exploring
further, even though Shelley's name was not on the
title page and there was, superficially, little to
class it as having above average interest. Some
research on the internet followed, and his hunch that
it was an item out of the ordinary proved to be spot
on. He then approached Bernard Quaritch, a leading
London antiquarian bookseller with a world-wide
reputation, and the rarity and importance of his find
was fully established. The item is now for sale
through Quaritch and it is hoped that its eventual
home will be in one of the country's great libraries,
perhaps the Bodleian back at the poet's old university
in Oxford, which already has a fine holding of Shelley
material.
So what exactly is the pamphlet, and
why is it such an important find? To look at, it is
very unassuming: it is in quarto format, and consists
of twenty pages, stitched and uncut, just as it
appeared when it was first issued. The title page
carries a publication date of 1811 (early March, in
fact) and the statement 'London: sold by B Crosby and
Co and all other booksellers'. The title of the work
is followed by the explanatory lines '...by a
Gentleman of the University of Oxford, for assisting
to maintain in prison Mr Peter Finnerty, imprisoned
for a libel'.
The work is dedicated ' to Harriet
W-B-K', and this constitutes the first printed
reference to Harriet Westbrook, Shelley's first wife,
with whom he eloped in August 1811 and who was later
to commit suicide in the Serpentine in 1816. Following
the dedication there is a Preface, a short essay which
takes as its subject politics and religion, and which
calls for 'a total reform in the licentiousness,
luxury, depravity, prejudice, which involves society'.
And after that is the poem itself, 172 lines of
rhyming couplets, of which more shortly. Henry R
Woudhuysen, Professor of English at University
College, London, notes in an article in the 14 July
2006 issue of the Times Literary Supplement that the
regularity of the couplets is uncharacteristic of the
poet, and suggests that there may have been a
collaboration with Shelley's sister Elizabeth, as with
his first work Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire,
published a year earlier in 1810 and printed by
Charles and William Phillips (the sons of the printer
James Phillips of Horsham) at their Worthing works
(see Horsham Society Newsletter June 2002).
The writing of Poetical Essay was prompted by the
imprisonment for libel of Peter Finnerty, a radical
Irish journalist, who was sentenced to eighteen months
in Lincoln gaol in February 1811 for criticising an
1809 British military action against the French (who
held Antwerp), and for accusing Lord Castlereagh of
the abuse of United Irish prisoners earlier in 1798.
The journalist's plight attracted much support, and
Shelley, quick as ever to back a radical cause and a
perceived injustice, contributed to a fund to maintain
Finnerty while in prison. At this time he was in his
second term at University College, Oxford, and a month
after Finnerty's imprisonment advertisements for
Poetical Essay appeared in the Oxford University and
City Herald ('Price Two Shillings'), as well as in The
Morning Chronicle and The Times.
But while the Finnerty case triggered the writing of
Poetical Essay, its actual subject matter ranged
widely, encompassing the devastations of war, the
iniquities of Castlereagh (with his 'Vices as glaring
as the noon-day sun'), the tyranny of Napoleon and the
oppressions of colonial India. Sir Francis Burdett,
who initiated a public subscription in support of
Finnerty, was the hero of the poem.
Through its press advertisements scholars had long
known of Poetical Essay, but no copy was known to
survive, either in one of our great libraries or in a
private collection. It was supposed that all copies
had been destroyed, because of the provocative nature
of its subject matter – as indeed had all but one
known copy of Shelley's The Necessity of Atheism
(again printed by the Phillips brothers at Worthing,
and again in March 1811), a work which resulted in him
being thrown out of Oxford. In fact the conjunction of
two radical publications by the recently-arrived young
undergraduate, not yet nineteen, might have been too
much for the authorities, and Poetical Essay could
well have hastened his expulsion.
 But
we now know that at least one copy escaped the net,
and we must be thankful for it. Pilfold Medwin's elder
brother, Thomas, had been a close companion (some
might say hanger-on) of Shelley's during his European
travels and elsewhere, and it may be that Shelley
passed this copy over to Thomas, who in turn donated
it to his brother when he came to live with him in
Horsham in his last years, or perhaps Pilfold
inherited it when Thomas died in 1869. Again maybe the
author gave it directly to Pilfold on one of his
earlier visits to Horsham, after his university
expulsion and seeking funds from his family or from
Thomas Charles Medwin, father of Thomas and Pilfold,
head of the family firm and legal agent to the Shelley
estate.
Whatever the circumstances behind Pilfold Medwin's
ownership, another possibility is that the pamphlet
left him in 1848, when he was forced to sell off his
possessions in order to pay off a debt. Among other
things, the sale notice listed his 'Library of nearly
600 elegantly bound Vols.', which included works by
Cowper, Goldsmith and Thompson, as well as 'a
beautifully Illuminated Prayer Book'. On the other
hand the auctioneer may have thought little of the
scrappy Shelley leaflet in such distinguished company,
and it may have stayed with Medwin until his death in
1880.
Who knows what became of it after that. One thing is
for sure: Poetical Essay has no protective binding,
and the very fact that it has survived at all means
that it must have passed through the hands of only a
few owners, and been placed on a limited number of
shelves. We can only be thankful that this slender and
unassuming pamphlet, unrecognised for so many years,
has now emerged into the light of day; such things
happen so rarely.
But perhaps there is another copy out there somewhere
- so never let that nondescript bundle of documents in
a bookshop corner pass you by without a careful check.
The very last in the pile could be it. |
