[Rarebooks] fa: THOMAS MEDWIN - JOURNAL OF THE CONVERSATIONS OF LORD BYRON 1824 (Robert Peel's Copy)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 13. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/hgtr79z

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Thomas Medwin: Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: Noted During a Residence with His Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822. London: Printed for Henry Colburn, 1824. FIRST EDITION; 4to (28 cm) in period calf rebacked to style, gilt-lettered morocco spine label; viii, 345, [1] pp.; engraved facsimile frontispiece.

With the bookplate of ROBERT PEEL (1788-1850), twice Prime Minister and the creator of the Metropolitan Police Force, whose constables were nicknamed "peelers" and "bobbies" in his honor. Boards with some scuffs,  rubbing, and edge-wear; light spotting and offsetting to the frontispiece and title-page, otherwise the contents are clean and fresh, firmly bound.

A handsome copy of Thomas Medwin's notorious piece of opportunistic ambulance-chasing, finished less than two months after word of Byron's death had reached London. Medwin, a cousin of Percy Bysshe Shelley, had visited Byron several times over the winter and spring of 1821-22, and then wove these brief encounters into this less than wholly flattering portrait of his host. His Conversations met with almost universal scorn from those close to Byron, among them Mary Shelley, John Murray, John Galt and, especially, John Cam Hobhouse. On the plus side, the work boasts the first appearance in print of Byron's vituperative stanzas addressed to Lady Caroline Lamb.