ROGERS, Samuel.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Poems; [together with] -- Italy, a Poem. First illustrated edition of the Poems, together with the first complete and illustrated edition of his longest poem, Italy, finely bound. Both are notable for their fine engravings from designs by J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Stothard. 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, of which Part I was published in 1821 and Part II in 1828, was not well received. Rogers therefore reissued it in this luxury format, for which he engaged Stothard and Turner as illustrators. Stothard's figure scenes are considered "perhaps the climax" of his illustration (ODNB). The popularity of this new edition of Italy, a Poem led Rogers to commission a similar version of his Poems, illustrated by Turner. The artist, "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" (ODNB).

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