Werner. A Tragedy.

BYRON, Lord George Gordon.

$400.00

Item Number: 120540

London: John Murray, 1823.

First edition, first state of Byron’s retelling of Kruitzner, or the German’s Tale in Harriet Lee’s Canterbury Tales without “the end” and the imprint on page 188 and with 7 pages of advertisements at rear dated November, 1822. Octavo, bound in three quarter morocco over marbled boards, marbled endpapers. From the library of English astronomer, politician, ornithologist, bibliophile and philatelist James Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford with his bookplate to the pastedown.

"Byron is to a far greater degree than the other romanticists the poet of humankind. He conveys with tremendous power the majesty and desolation of history, the vanity of pomp and pride, the transitoriness of fame. And he is the poet of contemporary society, keen to discern the false and the corrupt, courageous in denunciation yet with pity for the young and innocent… As a poet he mirrored brilliantly and without distortion an absorbingly interesting world" (Baugh, 1229).