Childe Harold's Pilgrimage : A Romance (2 Volumes Complete)
Hardcover
1885 · Boston
by Byron, George Gordon (Lord)
Boston: Joseph Knight Company Publishers, 1885. Original Edition. Hardcover. VG-/VG- (Both volumes art school ex-lib. with usual marks but clean, unmarked contents. Age toning to spines and page margins. Gilt decoration on covers bright and fresh. Hinges splitting a bit at end papers on Volume 2. Still a lovely set.. White vellum; gilt lettering and decoration. Volumes numbered consecutively with 236 total pages. Bw frontis of Lord Byron in Volume I; 14 photogravure illus. in Volume 1 and 15 in volume 2. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood. The poem contains elements thought to be autobiographical, as Byron generated some of the storyline from experience gained during his travels through Portugal, the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea between 1809 and 1811. The "Ianthe" of the dedication was the term of endearment he used for Lady Charlotte Harley, about 11 years old when Childe Harold was first published. - Wikipedia. (Inventory #: 159394)