BYRON, George Gordon Noel, Lord.

£875 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Complete Works. An early continental edition of Byron's collected poetry, bound uniformly with two biographical volumes edited by his friend Thomas Moore. Both works were published by the notable Parisian publisher of pirated English-language works, Louis-Claude Baudry (1793-1853). Baudry's Foreign Library preceded by decades the Tauchnitz editions of English books sold on the continent from 1841.As multiple agents held the British copyright for different Byron poems, contemporary authorized editions of his collected works were often found less complete than their continental counterparts. European publishers "who were not bound by British intellectual property laws were soon producing attractive multi-volume editions which were not only cheaper but textually more complete than anything available at home" (St Clair, p. 294). As such, they were often purchased by British individuals, book clubs, and circulating libraries.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.