Object details
Accession number
U27e59
Primary Creator
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Horsham, 1792 - 1822, near Viareggio)
Full title
To the Nile
Creation Date
4 February 1818
Object Case
Earlier Authors Case
Provenance
Collection of English essayist, critic, journalist, and poet Leigh Hunt (1784-1859).By inheritance to editor Thorton Hunt (1810-1873).Gift to Samuel Ralph Townshend Mayer (1841-1880), Spring 1873. Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from bookseller Bernard Quaritch (1819-1899), London for £30 on 22 July 1886. (with John Keat's poem "Robin Hood," ARC.008148)
Marks
Inscribed in pencil (verso, upper right corner): EF17
Inscribed in ink (verso, lower center): [...]pence
Dimensions
21.3 x 12.5 cm (8 3/8 x 4 15/16 in.)
Display Media
Ink on paper
Web 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.
Permanent Gallery Location
Long Gallery
Bibliography
Percy Bysshe Shelley. "To the Nile." The St. James's Magazine and United Empire Review (March 1876), pp. 647. (First time published in print)
Harry Buxtorm Forman (ed.). The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. (London: Reeves and Turner, 1876-77), p. 410.
Michael O'Neill and Daniel Reiman. Fair Copy Manuscripts of Shelley's Poems in European and American Libraries (New York: Garland, 1997).
Daniel Reiman et al. The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Vol. 3 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) pp. 323, 328, 955-959. (Dated 4 February 1818)
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