The Necessity of Atheism

"The Necessity of Atheism" is an essay on atheism by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, printed in 1811 by Charles and William Phillips in Worthing while Shelley was a student at University College, Oxford.

An enigmatically signed copy of the short tract was sent to all the heads of Oxford colleges at the University. At that time the content was so shocking to the authorities that he was rusticated for contumacy in his refusing to deny authorship, together with his friend and fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who may have been co-author. A revised and expanded version of the text was included as one of the notes to Shelley's poem Queen Mab in 1813, and some reprints with the title The Necessity of Atheism are based on this rather than the 1811 pamphlet.^[1]

Authorship[edit]

Although The Necessity of Atheism is often attributed solely to Shelley, historian of atheism David Berman says that Shelley "was probably assisted by his friend T.J. Hogg".^[6]

Format[edit]

The original pamphlet was described by Percy Vaughan as "a single foolscap sheet folded in octavo, consisting of half-title (with blank reverse), title page... (with blank reverse), Advertisement (with blank reverse), and text occupying pages 7–13. At the foot of page 13 is the imprint, "Phillips, Printers, Worthing," and the reverse of the page is blank. A blank leaf completes the sheet."^[7]

Bodleian Library, Oxford University (bound with three other pamphlets by Shelley). This (imperfect, lacking the half-title page) copy had been Shelley's gift to bookseller Thomas Hookham, but eventually found its way via Leigh Hunt to Shelley's son Sir Percy Shelley, whose wife Lady Jane Shelley gave it to the Bodleian.^[13]

[12]

London (part of the restricted-access Ashley Library Printed books, microfilm available. This copy was retained by the Oxford booksellers Munday & Slatter (later Slatter & Rose). John Rose kept it until his death in 1897, when it was purchased by Thomas J Wise, whose Ashley Library ended up in the British Library^[10])

British Library

St. John's College, University of Cambridge

[14]

Edinburgh University Library

Robert H. Taylor Collection, , New Jersey, United States (a copy apparently retained by the family of John Rose, the original printer of the pamphlet)

Princeton University Library

Miriam Lutcher Stark Library, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas (bought for $9,300 in 1939, a decision investigated by the Texas House of Representatives in 1943).

[15]

The Necessity of Atheism (1811) (1880 reprint)

Note to "There is no God", Canto VII, Note 13, from Queen Mab (1813), from Selected Prose Works of Shelley. London: Watts & Co., 1915.

; also includes the fragment On Life and the essay On a Future State, neither of which were part of The Necessity of Atheism or the note on Queen Mab