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LORD BYRON.  4  FIRST EDITION / FIRST PRINTINGS  - bound together.

 

1) The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems. FIRST EDITION / FIRST PRINTING. Printed for John Murray, London. 1816. With half title and ads. In 1816, after abandoning his wife in England, Byron joined Shelley on a tour of Europe, "Both poets were stirred by a visit to the Chateau de Chillon, whose dungeons revealed floors striated by the chains dragged by centuries of prisoners and a sluice gate for death by drowning; a blackened beam that had anchored the executioner's rope still swung overhead. Byron especially was drawn to their guide's story of the Swiss patriot Francois Bonivard, incarcerated in the 1530s by the Duke of Savoy. Bonivard is a measure of Byron's increasing skill at creating characters both heroic and psychologically complex" (Eisler, 527). Priced up to $1250.00 for this 1st Edition alone.

(Bound together with)

2) Poems of Lord Byron, on his Own Domestic Circumstances. Fare Thee Well; and A Sketch From Private Life. FIRST EDITION / FIRST PRINTING. Printed for Effingham Wilson, London. 1816.

(Bound together with)

3) Lord Byron's Farewell to England with Three other Poems, viz. Ode to St. Helena, To My Daughter, On the Morning of Her Birth, and To The Lily of France. FIRST EDITION / FIRST PRINTING. J. Johnston, London. 1816. With ads.

(Bound together with)

4) Mazeppa, A Poem. FIRST EDITION / FIRST PRINTING. John Murray, London. 1819.

The poem is a nightmare of perpetual motion, the tale of a young man, found to be the lover of the young wife of an old husband, who is punished by being bound naked to the back of an Arabian steed. This poem, with its macabre eroticism, its uncertain balance between tragedy and farce, was to appeal strongly to French Romantic painters of the early 19th century" (MacCarthy, 341).

 

All four First editions bound together in the period leather binding. Ornate gilded spine. Marbled boards . 8 5/8'' tall.

Internally VERY GOOD Condition. Hinge starting. Spine chipped. Printed on thick, quality paper that will last. Interior shows light foxing. Early bookplate. Half titles are present.

This would make an excellent gift and/or addition to any collection.

During his lifetime, Byron was the most internationally famous poet England had produced, and long after his death continued to be one of the most influential, widely imitated, and widely reviled personalities of his age.

Byron's notability rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured aristocratic excesses, huge debts, numerous love affairs, and self-imposed exile. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever contracted while in Messolonghi in Greece.