Mounseer Nongtongpaw

The poem is an expansion of the entertainer Charles Dibdin's song of the same name and was published as part of eighteenth-century philosopher William Godwin's Juvenile Library.

[3] Shelley biographer Emily Sunstein speculates that some of the verses may have been written to match illustrations that were already designed.

[1] Mounseer Nongtongpaw expands Dibdin's comic verses, adding more events to the narrative in shorter four-line stanzas, such as inquiries about a tavern feast, a shepherd's flock, a coach and four, and a hot-air balloon:[6] [John Bull] ask'd who gave so fine a feast, As fine as e'er he saw; The landlord, shrugging at his guest, Said "Je vous n'entends pas."

"A table set in such a style "Holds forth a welcome sign," — And added with an eager smile, "With NONGTONGPAW I'll dine.

[8] The attribution rested on a 1960 advertisement by a book dealer, which printed part of a 2 January 1808 letter from William Godwin to an unknown correspondent:[9] I therefore enclose two scribbles with which I would not otherwise have troubled you....That in small writing is the production of my daughter in her eleventh year, and is strictly modelled, as far as her infant talent would allow, on Dibdin's song....The whole object is to keep up the joke of Nong Tong Paw being constantly taken for the greatest man in France.

That in small writing is the production of my daughter in her eleventh year, & is strictly modelled, as ar as [sic] her infant talents would allow, on Dibdin's song.

[14] She claims that "read in its entirely, [the letter] indicates that Mary Godwin wrote the initial revised text for Nongtongpaw, but not the final version".

[16] According to Jeanne Moskal, one of the editors of the most recent definitive edition of Mary Shelley's works, "It can be deduced from the letter, and corroborated by other circumstantial evidence uncovered by Sunstein, that the correspondent had been invited to write a new version of Dibdin's song and that the correspondent and the composer of the 1808 text were therefore one and the same.

"[17] Mounseer Nongtongpaw represents the beginning of Mary Shelley's collaborative writing career, although it is no longer possible to reconstruct her actual contributions.