Byron, George Gordon Noel, Lord

Childe Harold's Piligrimmage. London: John Murray, 1841



8vo (9 x 5 3/4 in.; 225 x 145 mm). Engraved frontispiece portrait of  Byron in Albanian dress after T. Phillips, engraved title-page, and 61 engraved text illustrations all printed on india paper, folding map, additional letterpress title-page; some toning chiefly marginal, occasional light browning. Full green morocco, royal coat of arms on both covers within an elaborate gilt frame, gilt doublures with pink silk moiré linings, pink silk moiré flyleaves stamped with elaborate gilt frame, the spine in 5 compartments elaborately gilt (one reserved for lettering), edges gilt; the spine skillfully rebacked. Green cloth folding case, two lettering pieces on spine; upper joint splitting. 

William Agnew (armorial bookplate)

8vo (9 x 5 3/4 in.; 225 x 145 mm). Engraved frontispiece portrait of Byron in Albanian dress after T. Phillips, engraved title-page, and 61 engraved text illustrations all printed on India paper, folding map, additional letterpress title-page; some toning chiefly marginal, occasional light browning. Full green morocco, royal coat of arms on both covers within an elaborate gilt frame, gilt doublures with pink silk moiré linings, pink silk moiré flyleaves stamped with elaborate gilt frame, the spine in 5 compartments elaborately gilt (one reserved for lettering), edges gilt; the spine skillfullyrebacked. Green cloth folding case, two lettering pieces on spine; upper joint splitting.
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A fine presentation copy from Byron's longtime publisher to the poet Samuel Rogers: "After the First & Second Cantos of Childe Harold had been declined by the two leading Publishers of the Day they were offered to Mr. Murray & when it was known that he had given the sum of Four Hundred Guineas for them, everybody thought he had acted most injudiciously—except one person—who called upon Mr. Muray & told him 'not to be disheartened for he might rely upon its turning out the most fortunate purchase he had ever made' and so it has proved."

After Byron's juvenile Hours of Idleness was savaged in the Edinburgh Review, all the major London publishers save Murray's refused Byron's work. Cantos I and II, published in March 1812, enjoyed a tremendous success. He was lionized by both literary and aristocratic London, and Byron himself wrote of the moment that he "woke one morning and found myself famous."  Ironically, while Rogers was one of the most celebrated poets of his day, his fame has long since been eclipsed by his Romantic colleagues and friends Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron.