[Rarebooks] fa: LORD BYRON & John Cam Hobhouse - IMITATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS 1809 (one of Byron's earliest appearances in print)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, May 5. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/d9c5pye

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Lord Byron, John Cam Hobhouse, etc.:] Imitations and Translations from the Ancient and Modern Classics, together with Original Poems Never Before Published. Collected by J.C. Hobhouse, B.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809. FIRST EDITION, bound in half calf and marbled boards, gilt-tooled rules and spine decorations; top edges gilt, remainder untrimmed; 8vo (22.5 cm); xv, [1], 255, [1] pp.; with the half-title page.

One of Byron's earliest appearances in print, with nine of his poems appearing for the first time, including To A Youthful Friend; Inscription on the Monument of a Favourite Dog; The Farewell, To a Lady; Stanzas to ****** on Leaving England; etc. Edited and largely written by John Cam Hobhouse, Byron's close friend and soon-to-be traveling companion, the collection also contains two poems by Hobhouse addressed to Byron, "Epistle to a Young Nobleman" and "Imitation of the Sixth Ode, Second Book of Horace." The opening stanzas of the latter reflect the momentous (and subsequently famous) journey to the East that Byron and Hobhouse were about to undertake: "Tho' we, my friend! prepare to roam / From happy Britain's native shore…"

Binding with light wear to the extremities; intermittent light foxing to the contents, most noticeable on the last few leaves, some modest toning and creasing to the untrimmed edges, otherwise clean and sound, firmly bound. With the armorial bookplate and library ticket of noted English bibliophile and Byron collector Gilbert Compton Elliot (1871-1931), with his penciled note on the half-title and his distinctively eccentric device (a gilt skull and cross bones, flaming heart, and serpent crest) repeated in gilt in the spine compartments.