No one has hitherto undertaken an investigation of Shelley's relation to Robert Malthus. Previous Shelley scholarship contains no adequate examination of the remarks on Malthus in Shelley's prose. No attempt, furthermore, has ever been made to relate these remarks in the prose to any of the poems; and, therefore, some probable and significant allusions to Malthus in the poetry have gone entirely unnoticed. Various scholars, to be sure, have called attention to the main allusions discoverable in the burlesque Oedipus Tyrannus; but past interpretations of these references are in need of some modification. More important, however, than what pertains to Shelley's burlesque is the probable occurrence of hitherto quite unsuspected allusions to Malthus in a number of the major serious poems—including Prometheus Unbound.