Oxford University buys Shelley’s lost poem

A lost poem written in a 20-page pamphlet “Shelley’s Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things” by Percy Bysshe Shelley has been purchased by the University of Oxford.   This pamphlet will become the 12 millionth book to added to the Bodleian Library’s vast archives.

Shelley wrote the work during 1810 and 1811, while studying for his first year at the university.

This is believed to be the only copy known to have survived, addresses issues abuse of the press, dysfunctional political institutions and the global impact of war.

Printed by a stationers on Oxford High Street, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, it also contains 10-page 172 lines poem written under the alias of a “gentleman of the University of Oxford.”

It was attributed to Shelley fifty years after his death and was later discovered in a private collection in 2006.

Shelley’s essay was originally published to raise money for radical Irish journalist Peter Finnerty, who was in prison for libel after criticising Ireland’s then Chief Secretary, Lord Castlereagh.

Shelley was expelled from Oxford in 1811 following publication of another controversial pamphlet, the Necessity of Atheism, when he eventually settled in Italy. He was drowned while sailing in the Bay of Spezia neat Lerici on the Italian Riviera.