To Mary Shelley we owe both the first collected edition of Shelley's poems with her notes on the poet's life and work, as well as the first collection of Shelley's correspondence. The letters in her small but admirable collection, which was made public in 1840, at once established Shelley's right to be acknowledged as one of the great letter-writers of the nineteenth century. All the letters in Mrs. Shelley's selection were written from abroad, and it includes a greater portion of that splendid series of letters in which Shelley described his impressions of travel in Switzerland and Italy to Thomas Love Peacock. As far back as 1823, the year after Shelley's death, his" Letters from Italy" were announced to form a portion of the" Posthumous Poems," then preparing for publication. But the poems were issued in 1824 without the letters, as Shelley's father had forbidden the publication of anything of the nature of biography regarding his son under pain of stopping his allowance to Mary Shelley. She was, therefore, out of consideration for the welfare of her son, Percy Shelley, both forced to withhold her husband's letters from the world and deterred from writing his life. When at length (in 1839 and 1840) she was permitted to edit Shelley's poems and letters, the ban against publishing any biographical details was not withdrawn. And for that reason all those personal touches and allusions, which are the essential characteristics of familiar correspondence were eliminated from the first collection of Shelley's correspondence. Sir Timothy Shelley died in 1844. Mary Shelley survived him until 1851; she contributed, however, nothing more to Shelley literature. None the less hers remained for forty years the only available collection of the poet's letters, although, in the meantime, much of his V