SOURCE: “Incest in Laon and Cythna: Nature, Custom, Desire,” in The Keats-Shelley Review, No. 2, 1987, pp. 49-90.

In the following essay, Donovan traces the publishing history of Laon and Cythna, from its inception to its reprinting as The Revolt of Islam, and argues that the changes between the two versions make it difficult to understand Shelley's intent.

The printing history of Laon and Cythna; or, the Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century includes a notorious peculiarity. Shelley's grand attempt at a narrative romance on the epic scale, and his longest poem, was composed in draft at Marlow during the spring and summer of 1817, finished and seen through the press in the autumn and put on sale early in December, only to be withdrawn from circulation within a few days; quickly revised, it reappeared in January 1818 as The Revolt of Islam.¹ The revisions were not...