Fugitive Pieces by Baron George Gordon Byron Byron
page 3 of 78 (03%)
page 3 of 78 (03%)
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and distributed in fly-leaf form, were added later. This would explain
such discrepancies as the early dates of the inscriptions, and the presence of Byron's name on pages 46 and 48 in a volume otherwise anonymous, but there is little evidence to support it. Moore's account of _Fugitive Pieces_ is that it was distributed in November, Byron presenting the first copy to the Reverend J.T. Becher, prebendary of Southwell minster, who objected to what he considered the too voluptuous coloring of the poem "To Mary." The objection led Byron to suppress the edition immediately, he himself burning nearly every copy. This account is corroborated in part by Miss Pigot and in part by Byron. Immediately after the destruction, Byron began the preparation of a second volume, to replace _Fugitive Pieces_. This appeared in January, 1807, as _Poems on Various Occasions_, Byron describing it as "vastly correct and miraculously chaste." Of the 38 poems that constitute _Fugitive Pieces_, all except "To Mary," "To Caroline," and the last six stanzas of "To Miss E.P." were reprinted in _Poems on Various Occasions_. Nineteen of the original 38 poems occur in Byron's third work, _Hours of Idleness_, published in June or July, 1807. All three editions were printed by S. and J. Ridge, booksellers of Newark, England. Byron himself never reprinted the poems "To Mary" or "To Caroline," or the last six stanzas of "To Miss E.P." Except in a limited facsimile of _Fugitive Pieces_, supervised by H. Buxton Forman in 1886, "To Mary" has never been reprinted--not even in supposedly complete editions of Byron's works. |
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