Humanities and Social Sciences Library > Collections & Reading Rooms > The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Queen Mab

Manuscript changes in the poet's own copy of Queen Mab (London: Printed by P.B. Shelley, 1813)

Queen Mab was Shelley's first major poem, but he was never completely satisfied with it. Even after it was printed, he continued to refashion some of its passages, as this copy of the first edition, with revisions and additions in the poet's hand, makes clear. Left behind with his landlord in Marlow, the book passed through several hands, including those of the scholar and forger H. Buxton Forman and the composer Jerome Kern, before being acquired by Carl Pforzheimer in 1951, just a few years before his death.