The Publication of Hellas

This article considers the publication of Hellas, the last major poem of Shelley's that appeared in his lifetime. First, it focusses on the press-copy, the poem's most important textual witness (and arguably the basis of any modern edition), recovering from it a hitherto unnoticed but apparently authoritative reading. Second, it discusses Charles Ollier's unexpurgated edition, identifying passages that were removed from, or altered in, the first edition published in 1822. Third, it traces the gradual emergence of the suppressed passages in editions of the poem published between 1829 and 2002. Finally, with reference to ‘A Defence of Poetry’ and the first (authorised) posthumous edition of the poem, by Mary Shelley, published in 1839, it considers how the textual history of Hellas may illustrate Shelley's view that the meaning of a poem may not be realised in an author's lifetime. In her ‘Note on Hellas’ Mary Shelley appears to have identified the poem's awareness of itself as yet to be fully understood with a subtlety matched in the criticism of the late Michael O’Neill, one of Shelley's finest readers whose loss we continue to mourn.