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Percy Bysshe Shelley - To the Nile, 4 February 1818

Percy Bysshe Shelley (Horsham, 1792 - 1822, near Viareggio)

To the Nile, 4 February 1818

Ink on paper , 21.3 x 12.5 cm (8 3/8 x 4 15/16 in.)

Commentary

Isabella Stewart Gardner was an avid reader of poetry and enjoyed the work of many poets of the Romantic era, including Percy Bysshe Shelley. This original manuscript imagines the landscape of the Nile as a site of literary and historical significance, and the river itself as both a symbol and a source of knowledge. Isabella Stewart Gardner traveled the Nile by boat in 1874-1875 and would have appreciated the geographical allusions within this sonnet.