[Rarebooks] fa: DE RANCE : A POEM ( by Lord Byron's nemesis, the Vicar of Harrow) - 1815

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th-19th Century British books and  
pamphlets, auctions ending Sunday, May 9. Details and images can be  
found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340
OR
http://tinyurl.com/yhk74ma

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A., CA USA


J[ohn] W[illiam] Cunningham: De Rance. A Poem. London: Printed for T.  
Cadell, and W. Davies, in the Strand; and J. Hatchard, Piccadilly,  
1815. FIRST EDITION. Tall 8vo (22 cm), half polished calf over marbled  
boards, gilt-tooled spine decorations and morocco spine label;  
[2],xxxv,[1],142p.
Though the subject of the work is ostensibly Jean-Armand le  
Bouthillier de Rance (1626-1700), the worldly young hell-raiser who  
later repented his wicked ways, embraced the spiritual life and  
founded the Trappist Cistercians, the poem has been considered to be a  
thinly-disguised portrait of Lord Byron. John William Cunningham  
(1780-1861) was a prominent member of the evangelical and reformist  
"Clapham Sect." He became vicar of Harrow in 1811, where he came to  
know much about the school's most notorious graduate (Byron had been  
there from 1801-05). In 1822 he refused to allow a public burial for  
Byron's illegitimate daughter Allegra or to have a tablet erected in  
her memory in Harrow Church ("I feel constrained to say that the  
inscription he [Byron] proposed will be felt by every man of refined  
taste, to say nothing of sound morals, to be an offense against taste  
and propriety"). He had cast a cloud over Byron's affairs earlier as  
well, when, in 1816, the poet's estranged wife Annabella "followed her  
seaside stay with a visit to Dr. Cunningham in Harrow. Until now her  
Christianity had been cool and intellectual... At this low point,  
however, she embraced the evangelical's message with missionary  
fervor. Once, she had harbored hopes of leading Byron back to orthodox  
belief; now, her born-again faith made wresting Augusta [Byron's  
sister] from his baleful influence a Christian duty" (Eisler, Byron:  
Child of Passion, Fool of Fame, 1999). Byron, unsurprisingly, was not  
the vicar's greatest fan, describing him in a letter as a "notorious  
hypocrite."