BIB_ID
137678
Accession number
MA 814
Creator
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822.
Display Date
[1821 or 1822].
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1907.
Description
1 item (2 p.) ; 19.7 cm
Notes
Formerly identified as in the hand of Mary Shelley.
High reserve.
High reserve.
Provenance
Salvaged from the wreck of Shelley's boat the Don Juan by Captain Daniel Roberts; presented by him to Clotilda Elizabeth Stisted and in her possession when the manuscript was examined by Robert Browning in 1857; by descent to Charlotte M. Stisted; Mrs. McClelland (perhaps Charlotte Stisted's married name?); sale (London, Sotheby's, 27 July 1907) to the London dealer Frank T. Sabin; purchased by Pierpont Morgan from Sabin in 1907.
Summary
A fair copy of the poem (2 p.), followed by the duet (1 p., in Italian) "Ah perdona" from Mozart's opera La Clemenza di Tito. The poem and duet are written on two water-damaged and irregularly torn leaf-fragments, which were salvaged from the wreck of Shelley's boat the Don Juan after it sank off the coast near Viareggio. On the verso of "Ah perdona" Captain Daniel Roberts has penned the attestation: "Leghorn. Lines written by P. B. Shelley and found by me in the Don Juan after being under water 13 [...] off [Viareggio] from the [9]th of July [to] 15 of Septr 1822 = This boat found[ered] on the 8th in a strong squall and all [...] on board perished - Shelley - William[s] and a Sailor. Danl Roberts."
Housed in
Blue cloth drop-spine box (29.7 cm)
Catalog link
Department