Queen Mab and the Origins of Economic Value

Scholarship on Shelley’s economic thought has long acknowledged his embrace of the labour theory of value. This essay offers a more probing account of the poet’s investigations into the origins of economic value. Focusing on Queen Mab (1813), it situates Shelley’s value theory in relation to competing theories and examines his engagement with his cited sources, including works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Godwin. It argues that Shelley moves beyond this work to encompass unacknowledged sources, including John Locke’s theory of property rights and Adam Smith’s discussion of value in the Wealth of Nations, enabling him to formulate his own version of the pure labour theory of value. The essay thus provides a richer examination of the philosophical foundations of Shelley’s early economic thought, connecting these ideas to aspects of his ethics and epistemology.