# Is "Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: With Notes" by Percy Bysshe Shelley a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: With Notes by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Printed by P. B. Shelley; no trade publisher named on the title page, 1813) is identified by: Privately printed in an edition of only 250 copies for distribution among friends and never offered for public sale. An unauthorized and textually altered piracy of Queen Mab was issued by the bookseller William Clark in 1821, which Shelley tried unsuccessfully to suppress through the courts.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Privately printed in an edition of only 250 copies for distribution among friends and never offered for public sale
- Shelley's own name and address appear on the title page as printer because Thomas Hookham, the bookseller who arranged the printing, would not have his name attached to so radical a work
- Fearing prosecution for the poem's attacks on monarchy, organized religion, and marriage, Shelley "mutilated" many of the copies he personally bound and gave out, cutting away the title leaf and the final leaf that would have identified him, and in some copies the dedication leaf to his wife Harriet as well
- Complete copies retaining these preliminary leaves are markedly less common than mutilated copies and are considered the rarer state today
- Publisher imprint reads Printed by P. B. Shelley; no trade publisher named on the title page
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| Publisher | Printed by P. B. Shelley; no trade publisher named on the title page |
| Year | 1813 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | Privately printed in an edition of only 250 copies for distribution among friends and never offered for public sale |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
Privately printed in an edition of only 250 copies for distribution among friends and never offered for public sale. Shelley's own name and address appear on the title page as printer because Thomas Hookham, the bookseller who arranged the printing, would not have his name attached to so radical a work. Fearing prosecution for the poem's attacks on monarchy, organized religion, and marriage, Shelley "mutilated" many of the copies he personally bound and gave out, cutting away the title leaf and the final leaf that would have identified him, and in some copies the dedication leaf to his wife Harriet as well. Complete copies retaining these preliminary leaves are markedly less common than mutilated copies and are considered the rarer state today.

## Is this the true first?
An unauthorized and textually altered piracy of Queen Mab was issued by the bookseller William Clark in 1821, which Shelley tried unsuccessfully to suppress through the courts. That 1821 piracy has no standing as an edition sanctioned by Shelley and must not be confused with the true 1813 privately printed first edition.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Once Shelley's later fame made Queen Mab commercially desirable to publishers, numerous authorized and unauthorized nineteenth-century reprints followed; any copy naming a trade publisher on the title page, or dated after 1813, is one of these later printings rather than the original private edition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: With Notes* by Percy Bysshe Shelley a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/queen-mab-a-philosophical-poem-with-notes
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.