Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments.

£28,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Mary Shelley presentation copies on any title are rare. Inscribed on the front flyleaf: “Dr. Constancio / with the compts remembrances [of] | Mrs. Shelley. London 12th March 1842.” The inscription has been very slightly cropped at the fore-edge leaving just a fraction of the word “of” ad has lightly offset onto the flyleaf opposite. Presumably Mary Shelley sent the volumes to Dr Constancio (via Miss Descon, see below) in boards and he had them bound on the Continent preserving the flyleaves. An important presentation copy from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley |(1797-1851) to Francisco Solano Constancio (1777-1846) of her own “dear Book” - a personal and poignant selection of her late husband’s prose writings and letters assembled with great care and anxiety and intended to place, “truly magnificent”, Shelley, “very high in the scale of prose writers.” The selection includes the first publication of Shelley’s important unfinished essay “The Defence of Poetry” in which he famously described poets as, “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Mary Shelley begins her preface, “These volumes have long been due to the public; they form an important portion of all that was left by Shelley, whence those who did not know him may form a juster estimate of his virtues and his genius than has hitherto been done.” The prose pieces and letters gathered here were intended to accompany the Poetical Works of Shelley, published earlier in 1839 and also edited by Mary Shelley who wrote to her p

• Year: 1840

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