[Rarebooks] fa: THOMAS HOPE - ANASTASIUS - 1820 (Scandalous THREE-DECKER Attributed to BYRON)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Ending Sunday, April 19, along with a number of other 18th-19th  
century British titles...

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/arch_in_la

Cheers,
Ardwight Chamberlain

[Thomas Hope:] Anastasius, or, Memoirs of a Greek; Written at the  
Close of the Eighteenth Century. London: John Murray, 1820. Second  
edition. Three volumes, 8vo  (19 x 12.5cm); early half calf and  
decorative boards, spine stamped in gilt and blind with contrasting  
morocco labels; 347, 399, 439 pp.; all three volumes with half-titles  
present.

Very uncommon early printing of this literary sensation, a wild and  
sweeping picaresque novel set in the "exotic East," a tale full of  
caliphs, odalisques, Mamelukes, sea battles, illicit love, treachery,  
imaginative torture techniques, etc., recounting the travels and  
travails of a fearless but amoral soldier of fortune. Anastasius  
spurred a firestorm of speculation over the author's identity (it was  
at first attributed to Lord Byron, for obvious reasons), a hubbub that  
only increased when it was at last revealed to be the work of the  
wealthy art collector, patron and connoisseur Thomas Hope, whose most  
significant previous book bore the very un-Byronic title of Household  
Furniture and Interior Decoration. Byron reportedly wept when he read  
it — because he hadn't written it...