From hand to hand: The legend of Ginevra degli Amieri and the Pisan circle

This contribution discusses the preliminary findings of an investigation into the intricate history of MS/S54g, a little-known notebook written in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s hand, which is currently preserved at the University of Iowa. Dating from around 1820-22, when the Shelleys resided in Pisa, the manuscript includes translations from Homer’s Odyssey and, most notably, an incomplete transcription of the story of Ginevra degli Amieri in Italian, as Wollstonecraft Shelley read it in L’osservatore fiorentino (“The Florentine Observer”). This journal combines descriptions of Florence’s cultural landmarks with anecdotes and legends which are often drawn from ancient and authoritative histories of the city. Wollstonecraft Shelley’s engagement with L’osservatore unveils a network of multiple borrowings, as she disseminated some of its excerpts and shared the fruit of her labour among her peers in the Pisan circle. In particular, the annotations on Ginevra’s story were likely re-used by Percy Bysshe Shelley for his unfinished and posthumously published narrative poem “Ginevra” (1824) and reportedly served as a source of inspiration for Leigh Hunt’s A Legend of Florence (1840). Consequently, this notebook sheds light on the political and poetical attitude of the Shelleys and the whole Pisan circle regarding the transmission of manuscripts, the concept of authorship, and the latter’s entanglement in gender-related issues.