The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley/St. Irvyne; or, the Rosicrucian

St. Irvyne; or, the Rosicrucian
Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Harry Buxton Forman

Editor's Note before St. Irvyne

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London: Reeves and Turner, page 163

2054924St. Irvyne; or, the RosicrucianPercy Bysshe Shelley

ST. IRVYNE;

OR,

THE ROSICRUCIAN.

A ROMANCE.

BY
A GENTLEMAN
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR J. J. STOCKDALE,
41, PALL MALL.
1811.

[In the letter of the 1st of April, 1810, mentioned at p. 2 of this volume. Shelley say's that, if some one whom he designates as Jock (probably Robinson, the publisher of Zastrozzi) will not give him "a devil of a price" for his poem "and at least 60l." for his "New Romance in three volumes, the dog shall not have them." Perhaps we may pretty safely take this as a reference to St. Irvyne, and conclude that Mr. Robinson did not see his way to giving 60l. for the book ultimately published by Stockdale under circumstances discovered by Mr. Garnett in Stockdale's Budget, and made the subject of an article, Shelley in Pall Mall, in Macmillan's Magazine for June, 1860. From one of Shelley's letters in that article, it seems that Stockdale was at pains to "fit St. Irvyne for the press," Shelley being "by no means a good hand at correction." On the 2nd of December, 1810, Shelley wrote asking "When does 'St. Irvyne' come out?"; on the 18th of the same month he had seen Stockdale's advertisement of it; on the 20th he wrote to Hogg (Life, vol. I., p. 145), "St. Irvyne is come out; it is sent to you at Mr. Dayrell's; you can get one in London by mentioning my name to Stockdale"; on the 28th he wrote again (ib., p. 151), "Your discrimination of that chapter is more just than the praises which you bestow on so unconnected a thing as the romance taken collectively"; and on the 11th of January, 1811, he had already had the bill for the printing, and was writing to Stockdale to request that a copy of the book might be sent to Harriet Westbrook; and Mr. MacCarthy found in The Times for the 26th of January and 2nd of February, 1811, an advertisement of St. Irvyne opening with "The University Romance.—This day is published, price only 5s." St. Irvyne is a 12mo. volume consisting of fly-title, St. Irvyne; or, the Rosicrucian (as on the other side), with imprint "S. Gosnell, Printer, Little Queen Street, London," at foot of the back page, title-page as given opposite, and 236 pages of text, with head-lines throughout, St. Irvyne; or, on the left-hand, the Rosicrucian on the right. There seems to have been a remainder of the book unsold in 1822; for copies are frequently found made up from the original sheets, with a fresh title-page, worded precisely as the original title-page is worded, but with the date 1822. St. Irvyne, as well as Zastrozzi, was reprinted in The Romancist as the work of Shelley (in No. 60, 1840).—H. B. F.]