Madeleine Callaghan is Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature at the University of Sheffield.

'This is a compellingly argued book, and it represents a serious and substantial addition to Shelley scholarship. What is particularly refreshing, however, is that Callaghan is not simply an expert scholarly reader of Shelley. She quite clearly loves his poetry and is not afraid to say so, or to reach for superlatives when only superlatives will do. It is this passion for the poetry and for understanding the depths of Shelley’s artistry that drives her close reading and animates her account of individual texts. Surely a poet as attuned to the revolutionary potential of reading as was Shelley would be pleased to have found such a reader.'Daisy Hay, Keats-Shelley Journal

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: ‘A poem is the very image of life’Standard Abbreviations and Note on Texts1. ‘Painted fancy’s unsuspected scope’: The Esdaile Notebook, Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, and Queen Mab2. ‘These transient meetings’: Alastor and Laon and Cythna3. ‘All that is majestic’: The Scrope Davies Notebook4. ‘That such a man should be such a poet!’: ‘To Wordsworth’, ‘Verses Written on Receiving a Celandine in a Letter from England’, and Julian and Maddalo5. ‘In a style very different’: Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci6. ‘The sacred talisman of language’: The Witch of Atlas and A Defence of Poetry7. ‘One is always in love with something or other’: Epipsychidion and the Jane Poems8. ‘The right road to Paradise’: Adonais and The Triumph of LifeBibliographyIndex

Madeleine Callaghan is Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature at the University of Sheffield.

'This is a compellingly argued book, and it represents a serious and substantial addition to Shelley scholarship. What is particularly refreshing, however, is that Callaghan is not simply an expert scholarly reader of Shelley. She quite clearly loves his poetry and is not afraid to say so, or to reach for superlatives when only superlatives will do. It is this passion for the poetry and for understanding the depths of Shelley’s artistry that drives her close reading and animates her account of individual texts. Surely a poet as attuned to the revolutionary potential of reading as was Shelley would be pleased to have found such a reader.'Daisy Hay, Keats-Shelley Journal

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: ‘A poem is the very image of life’Standard Abbreviations and Note on Texts1. ‘Painted fancy’s unsuspected scope’: The Esdaile Notebook, Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, and Queen Mab2. ‘These transient meetings’: Alastor and Laon and Cythna3. ‘All that is majestic’: The Scrope Davies Notebook4. ‘That such a man should be such a poet!’: ‘To Wordsworth’, ‘Verses Written on Receiving a Celandine in a Letter from England’, and Julian and Maddalo5. ‘In a style very different’: Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci6. ‘The sacred talisman of language’: The Witch of Atlas and A Defence of Poetry7. ‘One is always in love with something or other’: Epipsychidion and the Jane Poems8. ‘The right road to Paradise’: Adonais and The Triumph of LifeBibliographyIndex