Poems. PHILIPPS, Janetta.

First and only edition. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a keen supporter of Philipps's poetry and offered to fund the publication of this volume. Philipps, likely influenced by the recent scandal of Shelley's expulsion from Oxford, firmly rejected his offer and instead published her book by subscription. Regardless, Shelley remained enthusiastic: the subscriber list shows he ordered six copies. Shelley sent Philipps a letter from Field Place on 16 May 1811 to inform her that he had read the manuscript of her "exquisite" Poems and wished to print it at his own expense (Jones, p. 88). He may have encountered the Poems through the publisher "Mr Strong", who he mentions has rejected Philipps's work. His next letter to Philipps suggests that she decisively rejected his offer. She did not wish to be personally or financially obliged to a stranger, especially not one whose views she found objectionable: in March of the same year, Shelley's pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism had caused public outrage and resulted in his expulsion from University College, Oxford. At this, Shelley accepted that he had "no longer a right to trespass on the time of a being not one of whose opinions coincide with mine" (p. 89). However, he continued to support the book by ordering several copies and presumably encouraged those close to him to do the same, as two of his sisters, his future wife, and several of his friends also appear on the subscriber list. Only Phillips's father equalled his order. Philipps's poetry personifies the natural world, appeals to notions of love and fate, and invokes mythical characters such as Astarte and Ariel. The verses on pages 31 to 32, titled "Stanzas inserted in the novel of Delaval", suggest that she was the author of the anonymous novel Delaval, an epistolary Gothic romance published in 1802 at the Minerva Press. Only four copies of the Poems are present in institutions in the UK. Provenance: "Mary Barnett, Holywelle St, Oxford, 1831", written in an educated hand on the front pastedown. Barnett was likely a relative of Thomas Barnett, a livery stable keeper who was operating on Holywell Street in 1830. Livery men were often well paid, so Thomas Barnett's relatives may have had the time and money to attend good schools. Frederick Jones, ed., Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Volume I: Shelley in England, 1964. Octavo (181 x 115 mm), pp. [12], 68. Contemporary tree calf, flat spine lettered and decorated in gilt, board edges gilt, marbled edges. Modern book label of J. O. Edwards to front pastedown, 20th-century bookplate of Willis Pratt to rear pastedown, former bookseller's notes to front free endpaper. Restoration to spine, joints, and extremities, contents a little foxed. An attractive copy.