The Works

Hardback. Good. Set of Byron's works in ten volumes, 8vo, based on the initial six-volume set published by John Murray in 1825, augmented by the two volumes published in 1824-1825 by John and Henry L Hunt (and thereby identified on the title pages as "The Works ... in eight volumes") and further augmented by two further volumes, these last shown as "Printed for the booksellers" and consisting of cantos I-XVI of Don Juan; the final canto, canto XVII, was a short, unfinished piece at Byron's death in 1824 and was essentially a repudiation of the views of his critics. Pagination: 8vo, pp I - xi, 303; II - [iii], 359; III - [iii], 345, [347]; IV - viii, 367; V - [iii], 404; VI - [viii], [i], 319; VII - vi, [8]-308, [309]; VIII - [i], 286; IX - [iii], 353; X - [iii], 398. Engraved frontispiece of Byron after the Phillips portrait of him in conventional Western dress. Uniformly bound in tan polished calf, the spines with raised bands and gilt labels. The spines of vols III and IV and the foot of the spine of vol X have suffered from some unknown but clearly incompetent attention whereby the leather has turned a very dark brown, almost black, in contrast to the rich dark chestnut colour of the other volumes (see the accompanying photograph for more detail). There is some light foxing (more prevalent on several pages in volumes VII and VIII and with some page browning in volumes IX and X) and a couple of the hinges on vols III and IV are cracked along the outside although without affecting the firmness of the binding (again, see the relevant image). There's some evidence here and there both on the outside and in the early gutters of old water staining but that's hardly obtrusive. Essentially it's an attractively printed set, well bound for private library use and marred only by the points raised above. It's not uncommon for earlier sets of works such as these to expand from an earlier planned collection as has happened here. The two Hunt volumes (VII and VIII) appear to be the sheets originally published as a two-volume set; they contain Werner, Heaven and Earth, Morgante Maggiore, The Age of Bronze, The Island, The Vision of Judgement, and, The Deformed Transformed, and appear here with an added title page identifying the volumes as part of now an eight-volume set of Byron's Works. The final two volumes are identified in similar style as part of the Works of Byron and as volumes IX and X but without identifying the number of volumes in the set. This may have been on account of prudence, given that the satirical poem aroused a great deal of hostility on account of its "immoral content" and its criticism of contemporary literary heroes although such as Sir Walter Scott, Swinburne, Shelley, Goethe and others thought highly of the work as it steadily appeared between 1819 and 1824. Despite the faults mentioned earlier this is a handsome set containing nearly all Byron's works. NOTE: as the complete set weighs some 6.6kg there will be a supplement needed for carriage, depending on final location and method used.