The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fugitive Pieces, by George Gordon Noel Byron

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Title: Fugitive Pieces

Author: George Gordon Noel Byron

Release Date: March 15, 2005 [EBook #15368]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FUGITIVE PIECES

BY

GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON

REPRODUCED FROM THE FIRST EDITION

WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

BY

MARCEL KESSEL

PUBLISHED FOR

THE FACSIMILE TEXT SOCIETY

BY

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK: MCMXXXIII

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

_Fugitive Pieces_, Byron's first volume of verse, was privately
printed in the autumn of 1806, when Byron was eighteen years of age.
Passages in Byron's correspondence indicate that as early as August
of that year some of the poems were in the printers' hands and that
during the latter part of August and during September the printing
was suspended in order that Byron might give his poems an "entire
new form." The new form consisted, in part, in an enlargement; for he
wrote to Elizabeth Pigot about September that he had nearly doubled
his poems "partly by the discovery of some I conceived to be lost, and
partly by some new productions." According to Moore, _Fugitive Pieces_
was ready for distribution in November. The last poem in the volume
bears the date of November 16, 1806.

A difficulty in supposing the date of completion of the volume to be
about November 16 is that two copies contain inscriptions in Byron's
hand with earlier dates. On the copy of the late Mr. J.A. Spoor,
of Chicago, the inscription reads: "October 21st Tuesday 1806--Haec
poemata ex dono sunt--Georgii Gordon Byron, Vale." That on the
copy in the Morgan library reads: "Nov. 8, 1806, H.P.E.D.S.G.G.B.,
Southwell.--Vale!--Byron," the initials evidently standing for the
Latin words of the preceding inscription. The Latin "Vale" in each
inscription, however, suggests that it commemorates a leave-taking,
the date referring not to the presentation but to the farewell.

It has been suggested that copies of the volume were distri