University of Virginia Library

Although Palmyra, and Other Poems was dated 1806, it must have been published in November or December 1805, for the frontispiece is dated November 1805 and the volume was reviewed in the Literary Journal for December 1805 (5:1326-27).

Letter to Thomas L'Estrange, 3 July 1860, in The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones, 10 vols. (1924-34), 8:250—hereafter cited as Works. For Peacock's disappointment over the sale of Palmyra, see his letter to Edward Hookham, 18 August 1810, in Works, 8:188.

MS letter in the possession of John Storms, quoted in my "Peacock before Headlong Hall: A New Look at His Early Years," Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin, 36 (1985): 24.

For a detailed description of the Sadleir-Taylor MS, see Works, 7:460-462. Most of the transcripts are in an unidentified feminine hand, but five poems on pages 39-47 are copied in another hand that the Halliford editors take to be Peacock's. I find this ascription doubtful, partly on account of the appearance of the handwriting and partly on account of the uncharacteristic carelessness of the transcription. See, for example, the evidence of the copyist's insensitivity to the dialect of the comic Irishman in "Paddy's Lamentation," as revealed below in the collation of that poem with the text in the Berg MS.

Works, 7:462.

The Berg MS texts of four poems have been collated in Shelley and His Circle, ed. Kenneth Neill Cameron and Donald H. Reiman, 8 vols. to date (1961- ), 1:251-253, 277-284, 332-334, 374-377. The titles and dates of all twenty-eight poems have been listed in a note to my "Peacock before Headlong Hall," pp. 15-16. Otherwise this interesting manuscript has been wholly ignored by Peacock scholars. It is here quoted by permission of the authorities of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

British Library Add. MS 36816, fols. 103-127. See the facsimile of a sample page in Works, 7: facing p. 317.

Alumni Cantabrigienses, compiled by John Venn and J. A. Venn, 10 vols. (1922-54), Part II, 4:82.

For details of the Lucretia Oldham poems, see H. F. B. Brett-Smith's Biographical Introduction to Works, 1:xxviii-xxx, and my "Peacock before Headlong Hall," pp. 14-15.

As noted by H. F. B. Brett-Smith, Works, 1:xxviii, note.

See Shelley and His Circle, 1:314-317.

See Works, 7:523.

The only two known copies of The Monks of St. Mark are both in the New York Public Library: one in the Berg Collection and the other in the Pforzheimer Collection. The argument that the poem was printed at the same time as Palmyra is here developed more fully than was possible in my "Peacock before Headlong Hall," p. 16.

A full record of the punctuation variants in the Berg MS would practically double the length of the collation, without making much difference in the way we read the poems. Even Peacock's exclamation points are used so liberally as to greatly weaken their force of emphasis. In general, the punctuation of the Berg MS is not only heavier but much more logical and consistent than that of the Sadleir-Taylor MS, many of whose worst defects have been supplied by the Halliford editors. Peacock's only unusual practice in the Berg MS is his frequent use of ellipsis points in place of, or in addition to, some other punctuation mark.