[Composed in the neighbourhood of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow, Bucks, 1817 (April-September 23); printed, with title (dated 1818), “Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City:  A Vision of the Nineteenth Century”, October, November, 1817, but suppressed, pending revision, by the publishers, C & J. Ollier. (A few copies had got out, but these were recalled, and some recovered.) Published, with a fresh title-page and twenty-seven cancel-leaves, as “The Revolt of Islam”, January 10, 1818.  Sources of the text are (1) “Laon and Cythna”, 1818; (2) “The Revolt of Islam”, 1818; (3) “Poetical Works”, 1839, editions 1st and 2nd—­both edited by Mrs. Shelley.  A copy, with several pages missing, of the “Preface”, the Dedication”, and “Canto 1” of “Laon and Cythna” is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian.  For a full collation of this manuscript see Mr. C.D.  Locock’s “Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library”.  Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1903.  Two manuscript fragments from the Hunt papers are also extant:  one (twenty-four lines) in the possession of Mr. W.M.  Rossetti, another (9 23 9 to 29 6) in that of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B.  See “The Shelley Library”, pages 83-86, for an account of the copy of “Laon” upon which Shelley worked in revising for publication.]

AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I scarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established fame might fail without disgrace.  It is an experiment on the temper of the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live.  I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of kindling within the bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor misrepresentation nor prejudice can ever totally extinguish among mankind.

For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures, and appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions, to the common sympathies of every human breast.  I have made no attempt to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present governing mankind, by methodical and systematic argument.  I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in the world.  The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first canto, which is purely