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Roxburghe Club publications are produced in two states. Each member of the Club receives a copy bound in half calf. In the list of members of the Club, each recipient's name is printed in red ink. Normally, not more than 42 copies are printed in this form. Additionally a member can print up to 300 copies of the title usually bound in cloth. These are available for sale, usually through the antiquarian bookdealers listed below.

Maggs Bros., 48 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DR
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7493 7160
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7499 2007
Email: robert@maggs.com
Attention of: Robert Harding

Bernard Quaritch Limited, 36 Bedford Row, Holborn, London WC1R 4JH
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7297 4888
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7297 4866
Email: rarebooks@quaritch.com

THE BRUSH HAS BEAT THE POETRY! ILLUSTRATIONS TO LORD BYRON'S WORKS. EDITED BY JOHN R. MURRAY

Sale Notes

Small 4to. XII, 136pp. [Text: 206 x 165 mm]. Bound in green cloth, the covers blocked with a gilt panel with a gilt initial "B" with Byron's coronet in an oval cartouche in the centre; spine blocked and lettered in gilt; based on the original binding of c. 1822.

Privately printed for John Murray VII. 100 copies only are available for public sale.

Price: £75.00

Sale Vendor

Maggs Bros Ltd.

Notes

"Still in the archives at 50 Albemarle Street, where for over two hundred years the Murray family lived and carried on their publishing business, is a unique seven-volume edition of Byron's works. It dates from 1820-22, is bound in green morocco with fine crimson silk doublures and - most importantly - it is the first edition of the poet's work to be illustrated. Also surprising is that this edition seems to consist of only one copy." (Preface).


The 1820-22 edition is illustrated with 23 engravings after Richard Westall R.A.(1765-1836) and 12 after Thomas Stothard R.A. (1755-1834). Stothard's original watercolours were destroyed in the bombing of Holland House in 1940 but 23 of William Westall's beautiful original watercolours (plus one of Childe Harold that was not used) survive in the Murray archive at Albemarle Street. All are reproduced along with their engraved plates and with the engraved plates after Stothard together with the relevant passages from Byron's poems.

The illustrated introduction discusses John Murray's friendship with Lord Byron, the life and works of the two artists and includes extracts from the prickly correspondence between Murray and Charles Heath, the principal engraver commissioned to reproduce Westall's designs.

"This is the first illustrated book of its kind to be produced about Byron, enabling us to see his work in a fresh light through the eyes of two outstanding illustrators." (Preface).

ISBN 978 1 5272 0122 4

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