Mary Shelley presentation copies on any title are rare. Inscribed on the front flyleaf: “Dr. Constancio / with the compts & remembrances [of] | Mrs. Shelley. London 12th March 1842.” The inscription has been very slightly cropped at the fore-edge leaving just a fraction of the word “of” ad has lightly offset onto the flyleaf opposite. Presumably Mary Shelley sent the volumes to Dr Constancio (via Miss Descon, see below) in boards and he had them bound on the Continent preserving the flyleaves.
An important presentation copy from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley |(1797-1851) to Francisco Solano Constancio (1777-1846) of her own “dear Book” - a personal and poignant selection of her late husband’s prose writings and letters assembled with great care and anxiety and intended to place, “truly magnificent”, Shelley, “very high in the scale of prose writers.” The selection includes the first publication of Shelley’s important unfinished essay “The Defence of Poetry” in which he famously described poets as, “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
Mary Shelley begins her preface, “These volumes have long been due to the public; they form an important portion of all that was left by Shelley, whence those who did not know him may form a juster estimate of his virtues and his genius than has hitherto been done.” The prose pieces and letters gathered here were intended to accompany the Poetical Works of Shelley, published earlier in 1839 and also edited by Mary Shelley who wrote to her publisher Edward Moxon in May of that year that, “In a short time I should like to see you with regard to [a] volume of Letters & other prose essays - which I believe that the public will warmly welcome.” (Letters, II, p.315). She then personally approached many of Shelley’s friends to accumulate letters that might be included in these volumes. It is clear from Mary Shelley’s letter to Maria Gisborne in February 1835 that the idea of producing a volume of letters had always been part of a plan that had begun with the Poetical Works:
“I must tell you that I have had the offer of 600£ for an edition of Shelley’s works with life & notes. I am afraid it cannot be arranged yet at least - & the life is out of the question - but in talking over it the question of letters comes up - You know how I shrink from all private detail for the public - but Shelley’s letters are beautifully written, & every thing private could be omitted - You must have many of them. Would you allow the publisher to treat with you for their being added to my edition? - If I could arrange all as I wish, they might be an acquisition to the book, and being transacted through me you could not see any inconvenience in receiving the price they w^d^ be worth to the bookseller, This is all in aria as yet - but I should like to know what you think about it.” (Letters, II, p.221)
The volume includes Mary’s own personal preface and notes (“an invaluable resource for future biographers and critics” ODNB) in which she writes of the “pang occasioned by his [Shelley’s] loss” never leaving her and her belief, “that he has passed into a sphere of being, better adapted to his inexpressible tenderness, his generous sympathies, and his richly gifted mind.” (I, p. xxvii) Shelley’s prose works include his important “Defence of Poetry” as well as essays on love, capital punishment, metaphysics and various translations. The second volume includes an account of ghost stories written at Geneva (which spawned Mary’s novel Frankenstein) and letters to Leigh Hunt, William Godwin, Mary Shelley and a number of other correspondents. The final letter in the volume was written to Mary Shelley on July 4th 1822 (“How are you, my best Mary?”). He died four days later.
Mary Shelley wrote to Leigh Hunt for advice while she was compiling these volumes:
“I am about to publish a vol. of Prose of Shelleys - This will please you I am sure - & it will not be painful to me as the other was. But I want your advice on several portions of it - especially with regard to the translation of the Symposium. I want also to know whether you would assent to the letters you published in your recollections being joined to such as I shall publish - I expect you on Wednesday & will dine at 5 - but if you could [come] a little earlier to discuss these things I shall be glad” (26th July 1839; Letters, II, p.319-320)
This would be the first of a number of letters to Hunt in which, despite her assurances that the project would not be “painful”, she agonised over the inclusion of certain pieces and sought more letters to include right up to the date of publication (and beyond):
“Let me have the letters as soon as you can even if too late for this - they will only be time enough for another edition - so let [me] have them as soon as you can - I have it at heart to replace these passages. - why not - we wish to shew him not ourselves - & **each word of his is him”** (Letter to Leigh Hunt, 15th November 1839, Letters, II, p.331)
Mary Shelley had already written to Edward Moxon in October (only a couple of months before publication) requesting that: “After printing an Essay I mentioned to you on the Devil & Devils, I have changed my mind & will not include it in this publication. I think it would excite a violent party spirit against the volumes which otherwise I believe will prove generally attractive. The printer therefore must cancel the pages.” (Letters, II, p.327)
The reviews of these volumes were published in mid-December 1839 and greeted by Mary Shelley with joy and exasperation:
“The Examiner was really good - very - the Athenaeum creditable. - But the Spectator! - its editor must be both a goose and a coxcomb - the notion that L[ord] B[yron] had any hand in the Peter Bell is half-witted - **the incapacity of appreciating the Defence of Poetry betrays a degree of ignorance rarely to be paralleled in the whole circle of criticism - to so foolish and uneducated a person the Fragments of Metaphysics must indeed appear devoid of meaning - he does not know his a.b.c. of the language in which they are written.”** (to Edward Moxon, Dec 19th 1839, Letters, II, p.332)
It was not until January 1840 that she could write to Moxon in a more relaxed tone and with a sense of relief: “I hope our book goes on well - & that this New Year will in every way prosper with you” (6th Jan 1840. Letters, II, p.336)
A very fine presentation copy from Mary Shelley to her father’s and mother’s co-memorialist and the translator of William Godwin’s On Population, Francisco Solano Constancio (1777-1846).
Mary Shelley wrote to Claire Claremont on 4th February 1842: “I have subscribed to Dr Constancio’s periodical - & by some oversight never paid will you pay 22 francs for me for a year’s subscript[ion] … I promised Dr C. [Constancio] a set of Shelleys Works. **I will send them by Miss Descon if she will take them.”** (Letters, III, p.22). Miss Descon was Carina Overall Descon (c.1810-67), a leading society dressmaker and milliner, trading as Madame Descon from 27b Old Bond Street and later 11 Bruton Street, Berkeley Square. On 28 Feb. 1846 at St George’s, Hanover Square, she married Edward Day of the same parish.
Mary Shelley presentation copies are notably rare: Aside from the present book Rare Book Hub only records a set of Shelley’s Poetical Works (1839) inscribed to John George Perry [perhaps the surgeon to the Foundling Hospital from 1829-43 and Medical Inspector of Prisons (1802-70)] and later owned by Lewis Carroll sold at Christie’s, New York, 9/6/1992, lot 177, $6600 [to Jon A. Lindseth], and a copy of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (1830) from the Family Classical Library presented by Mary Shelley to her god-daughter Prudentia Sarah Jefferson Hogg (1828-97), unsold at auction in 2007 and 2011. The Pforzheimer collection of Shelley and his Circle at NYPL holds only two presentation copies from Mary Shelley: a first edition of Frankenstein (inscribed to Thomas Jefferson Hogg) and a copy of The Last Man (1826) inscribed to Maria Gisborne. Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s copy of the Poetical Works of Percy Shelley (at NYPL) is inscribed “from the Publisher.” A presentation copy of Frankenstein (one volume only) inscribed by her to Lord Byron was sold by a UK dealer in 2012.
Francisco Solano Constancio, MD (1777-1846) was a Portuguese physician, philologist, and diplomat who published the monthly periodical L’Esprit des revues anglaises. Constancio studied medicine in Edinburgh in 1795 and the following year published essays under the pseudonym “Felix Phantom” and later worked as a journalist in Paris, London and Lisbon before being sent to America as Portuguese chargé’ d’affaires (1822-23) after which he remained at Philadelphia until 1826*.* Bennett notes in the Letters that, “On 18 December 1837 Harriet Boinville wrote to Mary Shelley requesting material about Godwin for her friend Dr. Constancio, who was about to write a short memoir of Godwin, whom he greatly admired. The article appeared in Biographie universelle, ed. M. M. Michaud, 45 vols. (Paris. Louis Vives, 1852-66), XVIII, 40-42.” (Letters, p.23). The entries for Godwin and Wollstonecraft are both signed CON [Constancio] and Z, the initial used by Mary Shelley to conceal her authorship. Constancio also translated William Godwin’s On Population (Paris, 1821), Thomas Malthus’s Principles of Political Economy (1820), and David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Paris, 1819).
Bennett (Betty T.), ed., The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 2 vols (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
.
