Title: MARINO FALIERO, DOGE OF VENICE. An ...
Publisher: John Murray, London
Publication Date: 1821
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st
XXI, [1], 261, [1] printed pages. The first issue with the Doge's speech on page 151 consisting of only five and a half lines and only 21 lines on page 154. Set in Venice in 1355, "Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice" is a blank verse tragedy in five acts by Lord Byron, who was inspired to take on this subject when, on examining the portraits of the Doges in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, he discovered that the portrait of Faliero had been blacked out. The first of Byron's two Venetian plays, a well-documented historical drama about the Doge who turned traitor to the Venetian Republic. Marino Faliero, recently elected Doge of Venice, offends one of the chief officers of state, Michel Steno. Steno retaliates by writing on the Doge's throne an indecent libel on Faliero's wife. For this he is tried by the Council of Forty and convicted, but is only sentenced to a month's imprisonment. Faliero is so outraged by this, as he believes, inadequate punishment that he secretly joins in the conspiracy of a group of malcontents to overthrow the constitution of Venice, thinking thereby to gain revenge on his enemies. The plot is discovered and Faliero is executed. Published along with his poem based on Dante's exile and death in Ravenna. Written at Ravenna during the month of June 1819, "The Prophecy of Dante" was intended for the Italians as a vision of "liberty and the resurrection of Italy" (see Medwin, "Conversations," (1824), page 241). Bound with a third edition, 1821, of Letter to **** ******, on the Rev. W.L. Bowles' Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope, 61 printed pages, London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street. 2500 copies of the entire edition printed. The Strictures appeared in Bowles's 1806 edition of Pope. Bound with Mazeppa, a Poem, first edition, 1819, London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street. [2], 71 printed pages. Second Issue with p. 70 blank and publisher's imprint moved to reverse of p. 71. Byron's narrative poem based on the early life of Ivan Mazeppa, a Ukrainian military leader who served in the Polish court but was, at least according to legend, strapped naked to a wild horse and exiled for having an affair. The volume also contains the short poem "Ode" and the short prose piece, "Fragment of a Novel", pages [57]-69, Byron's unfinished vampire tale written during the same three-day stormy writing contest at the Villa Diodati in June 1816 by Lake Geneva that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John Polidori's The Vampyre (itself considered the first English vampire story, though based largely on Byron and his Fragment). The unfinished piece was included with Mazeppa against Byron's wishes. In 1820 he wrote to Murray, "I shall not allow you to play the tricks you did last year with the prose you post-scribed to 'Mazeppa', which I sent you to not be published, if not in a periodical paper,--and there you tacked it, without a word of explanation, and be damned to you." [Wise p.132]. Some very mild browning on ocassional leaves. 22.5 x 14.5 cm. Rebound in half calf. Spine in six compartments, with raised bands and double gilt rules & red morocco label with gilt lettering. The boards are in marbled papers and the corners are blind ruled. All edges with contemporary marbling. A three-books-in-one combination of two first and one third editions of Lord Byron in very good condition with a beautiful modern binding in a nineteenth century design. Bookseller Inventory # 4261