ROGERS, Samuel.

£1,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Poems. First illustrated edition of the Poems, presentation copy, inscribed in Rogers's hand "from the Author" on a front binder's blank, together with the first complete and illustrated edition of his longest poem Italy, both with engravings from designs by J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Stothard. These copies are in a superb gilt binding by Riviere and Sons. Rogers visited Italy for the first time in 1814, and it was during this trip that he envisioned the concept for his famous poem. The first edition - part I published in 1821 and part II in 1828 - was not well received; therefore, Rogers engaged Stothard and Turner to illustrate a new luxury publication (the present one), regarded as "one of the outstanding examples of the illustrated book in the first half of the nineteenth century" (ODNB). Stothard's figure scenes in this volume are considered "perhaps the climax" of his illustration, and Turner's landscapes are "his first outstanding success with steel... The success of Italy persuaded Rogers to undertake a similar costly edition of his Poems which was published in 1834 with thirty-three vignettes after Turner. Turner - himself a writer of poetry and clearly very sympathetic to that of Samuel Rogers - created some of his most telling images for these two beautiful books, which established him as the leading illustrator of the day" (ibid).

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