[Composed at Este after Shelley's first visit to Venice, 1818]
(Autumn); first published in the "Posthumous Poems", London, 1824
(edition Mrs. Shelley). Shelley's original intention had been to print
the poem in Leigh Hunt's "Examiner"; but he changed his mind and, on
August 15, 1819, sent the manuscript to Hunt to be published
anonymously by Ollier. This manuscript, found by Mr. Townshend Mayer,
and by him placed in the hands of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., is
described at length in Mr. Forman's Library Edition of the poems
(volume 3 page 107). The date, 'May, 1819,' affixed to "Julian and
Maddalo" in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824, indicates the time when the
text was finally revised by Shelley. Sources of the text are (1)
"Posthumous Poems", 1824; (2) the Hunt manuscript; (3) a fair draft of
the poem amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (4) "Poetical Works", 1839,
1st and 2nd editions (Mrs. Shelley). Our text is that of the Hunt
manuscript, as printed in Forman's Library Edition of the Poems, 1876,
volume 3, pages 103-30; variants of 1824 are indicated in the
footnotes; questions of punctuation are dealt with in the notes at the
end of the volume.
