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‘BesiDes all that roMe itselF aFForDs [...] to the eYe anD iMagination, i reVisit it as the Bourne oF a Pious PilgriMage. the treasures oF MY Youth lie BurieD here’
10. sHelley, mary Wollstonecraft. rambles in germany and italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843. London: Bradbury and Evans for Edward Moxon, 1844.
£1,495
8vo in 12s (194 x 120mm), 2 volumes. late 19th-/early 20th-century half chestnut crushed morocco gilt over cloth boards by Wood, london with their inkstamps on front free endpapers, the spines gilt in compartments, lettered directly in 2 and dated at the foot, others panelled in gilt and with gilt leaf- tool cornerpieces, top edges gilt, others uncut, marbled endpapers; pp. i: xx, 280; ii: vii, [1 (blank)], 296; extremities very lightly rubbed, small bump at the head of one spine, slightly marked on upper board of one vol., some light browning and occasional light spotting, nonetheless a very good set retaining both half-titles in a handsome binding.
First edition. Mary shelley’s last book, Rambles in Germany and Italy was based upon two journeys which she undertook with her son Percy Florence shelley in 1840 and 1842-1843. the first journey in 1840 was to the north of italy, and marked her return to a country which she had last seen in 1823, when she had left the it as a desolate and penniless widow with her infant son Percy, having lost her husband Percy Bysshe shelley and children clara and William shelley in the preceding years; the work opens, ‘can it, indeed, be true, that i am about to revisit italy? how many years are gone since i quitted that country! there i left the mortal remains of those beloved — my husband and my children, whose loss changed my whole existence, substituting, for happy peace and the interchange of deep-rooted affections, years of desolate solitude, and a hard struggle with the world; which only now, as my son is growing up, is brightening into a better day. the name of italy has magic in its very syllables. the hope of seeing it again recalls vividly to my memory that time, when misfortune seemed an empty word, and my habitation on earth a secure abode, which no evil could shake’ (i, pp. 1-2). the second journey was undertaken to visit german spas for her health, and also to visit Percy Bysshe shelley’s grave in rome during holy Week, which she describes in the light of her interest in catholicism (which had increased ‘despite her very english disdain for its superstitions and her good old Jacobin hatred of the priesthood’ (J. Moskal ‘travel Writing’, in e. schor (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley (cambridge: 2003), p.252): ‘Besides all that rome itself affords of delightful [sic] to the eye and imagination, i revisit it as the bourne of a pious pilgrimage. the treasures of my youth lie buried here’ (ii, p. 225). the work is remarkable for the juxtaposition (and inseparability) of the private and the political, as Moskal notes: ‘Rambles comes to terms not only with Mary shelley’s personal losses, but also with the political losses she shared with a generation of english liberals. their hopes for greater enfranchisement of the middle and working classes had been raised by the French revolution of 1789 with its cries of “liberty, equality, Fraternity,” to be dashed by repeated blows: the violence of the revolutionaries in the reign of terror in 1794; the shameless aggression of their successor, napoleon, in conquering other nations in the name of the revolutionary “liberty”; the harsh repression by the wars’ victors, Britain and austria, of any reforms associated with the French; and the slow pace of liberalism in Britain itself, which led to the chartist workers’ movement in the 1840s. in Rambles, Mary shelley keeps liberal hopes alive by proposing for them a more limited scope (and a more distant one) by directing attention to the nascent nationalist movement in italy. she speaks for the risorgimento (“resurgence”), italy’s nationalist movement, and defends the rebellious carbonari’ (p. 247). indeed, the unstated purpose of the book’s publication was to raise money to fund the activities of the aristocratic italian revolutionary and disciple of Mazzini, Ferdinando luigi gatteschi, who had been exiled to Paris, where Mary shelley had met him in 1843 and become close to him. however, although gatteschi received £60 from Rambles, he then attempted blackmail Mary shelley by threatening to publish letters from her, and she was forced to enlist the assistance of a friend, who bribed the Paris police, who raided gatteschi’s home, and seized and destroyed all his papers.
Ashley Library V, p. 43; Pine-Coffin 840/3; Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 244; Theakstone p. 245.
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