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The Source for Shelley's "Saint Edmond's Eve" Plagiarism

[ANONYMOUS].

Tales of Terror, with an Introductory Dialogue.

Place and Imprint: London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Sold by J. Bell, 1801.
Edition: First edition.
Bibliographical References: Summers, Gothic Bibliography, pages 525-26; and see Richard Garnett, Original Poetry By Victor & Cazire (John Lane, 1898).
Condition: Fine copy.
Book ID: 29004

Physical Description

8vo, 20th century black straight-grain half morocco, marbled paper boards, brown morocco spine label, gilt rules and lettering. Engraved title, color frontispiece and two color plates. Without the final leaf of advertisements.

Comments

An anonymously compiled collection of 20 tales in verse which parody M. G. Lewis' popular Tales of Wonder (1801), and was often incorrectly attributed to him. In his Gothic Bibliography, Montagu Summers writes: "The book is gruesome and in its illustrations even disgusting and it seems impossible that Lewis could have had anything to do with it. Some of the ballads are too coarse and grotesque to stand comparison with any work by M. G. Lewis; and they read more like an attempt to ridicule the popularity of the gothic romances for which Lewis was so largely responsible." This poor pastiche of Lewis has one interesting facet: the fifteenth of the twenty tales is "The Black Canon of Elmham, or Saint Edmond’s Eve, an Old English Ballad" which reappeared ten years later almost verbatim as "Saint Edmond’s Eve" in Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, the collaborative volume of verse by Percy Bysshe Shelley and his sister Elizabeth, published in 1810. Its publisher, J. J. Stockdale, discovered the plagiarism once the book had been issued and confronted Shelley, who pointed the finger at Elizabeth and insisted that all the remaining copies be destroyed. Percy was almost certainly the plagiarist, as he was responsible for the lion's share of the contents of the volume, but the whole truth is not known. Richard Garnett's writes at some length about the plagiarism in the introduction to his edition of Original Poetry. Binders' ticket of Abrams of Somerset on the rear paste-down. The destruction of the remaining copies of Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, caused it to become a "black tulip" of the Shelley canon.

Price: $2,500.00