Connecting Collections – Queen Mab
Professor Michael Rossington explores Percy Bysshe Shelley’s radical early poem Queen Mab (1813), examining its attacks on political and religious oppression and its complex publishing history, including its later circulation among 19th-century reformers.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was a major English Romantic poet, known for his visionary imagination, radical political views, and fierce commitment to social reform. Though he died young, his works, which are full of idealism, rebellion, and lyrical power, had a lasting influence on literature and political thought.
Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem, With Notes (1813) is Shelley’s earliest major poetic statement, remarkable not only for its youthful ambition but also for the radicalism that made it both influential and notorious. Framed as a visionary dialogue between the fairy Queen Mab and an accompanying spirit, the poem carries the sleeping Ianthe (a young woman whose name evokes purity and innocence) through a dream-journey that reveals the origins of human suffering and the oppressive institutions, such as monarchy, religion, commerce, and war, that perpetuate it. The verse is expansive, idealistic, and often incendiary, reflecting Shelley’s determination to expose what he saw as the hypocrisies of established power.
A striking feature of the book is its long prose notes, where Shelley is even more direct. He discusses writers who doubted traditional religion and uses their ideas to support his own openly atheistic and sceptical views. The notes also outline causes he cared about, including women’s rights, vegetarianism, and social reform.
Shelley placed his own name on the title page of the 1813 printing to shield the printer from possible blasphemy charges, as the poem’s criticism of religion was risky at the time. Although intended only for private circulation, Queen Mab was later illegally reprinted after Shelley’s death, gaining popularity among radicals and freethinkers.
The poem’s later publishing history added further complications. The publisher Edward Moxon asked Mary Shelley, the poet’s widow, to prepare a collected edition of his works. To avoid controversy, she removed many of the most radical and anti-religious lines in sections 6 and 7 from Queen Mab, but a new edition in 1839 restored the original material. These sections are shown from the 1813 version below:
Newcastle University Special Collections’ copy is held in the Cowen (Joseph) Collection. It reflects the poem’s long link with political dissent. Joseph Cowen (1829–1900) was a Newcastle-born politician, newspaper owner, and committed radical who championed democratic reform and international revolutionary causes, making Queen Mab a fitting part of his library.
Professor Michael Rossington, Professor of Romantic Literature, explores Queen Mab in more detail in this Newcastle University Connecting Collections video.
