THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY, to which is added, Queen Liberty; Song-To the Men of England.

Early edition. 12mo. 24pp. + 34pp. of extra blank leaves for bulk. Later nineteenth-century quarter cloth over olive-green paper-covered boards with titles in gilt to the spine. Publisher's original printed paper wrappers bound in. The author William St Clair's copy, with his pencil inscription and notes to the front pastedown. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with a little rubbing to the extremities. The contents with toning to the endpapers are otherwise in very good order and clean throughout.

An early edition of Shelley's Masque of Anarchy, first published in 1832. One of the greatest poems of political protest in the English language, the work is often regarded as the first modern statement of the principle of non-violent resistance. Written in response to the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, Shelley had sent the manuscript in 1819 for publication in The Examiner. Its editor, Leight Hunt, however, withheld it from publication as he "thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse". A powerful condemnation of tyranny, the poem serves as an exhortation for the people to throw off the yoke of their oppressors through peaceful collective action: "Let a great assembly be, of the fearless, of the free". A work which has been read aloud to assembled crowds during many of the great struggles for political freedom and social change around the world from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the oft-quoted final verse has remained the most stirring: "Rise, like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fall'n on you: Ye are many - they are few!" Provenance: from the library of William St Clair (1937-2021).