Fugitive Pieces

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: ISO-8859-1
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PIECES ***
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FUGITIVE PIECES
BY
GEORGE GORDON NOËL 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 distributed earlier
than November and that some of the poems, printed separately 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.
Only four copies of Fugitive Pieces are known to-day, and one of these
is incomplete. The copy from which the present facsimile is made was
originally given by Byron to Becher and preserved by him in spite of
his objections to the poem "To Mary." From Becher's family it passed
into the possession of Mr. Faulkner, of Louth, solicitor for the Becher
family. In 1885 it was in the possession of H.W. Ball, antiquary and
bookseller of Barton-on-Humber, who sold it to H. Buxton Forman.
Forman used it for his facsimile, but incorporated certain manuscript
corrections of the original, so that his facsimile is not exact. The
original is now owned by Mr. Thomas J. Wise, who has kindly

permitted its use for the present facsimile.
Of the other three copies, the incomplete one, lacking pages 17-20 ("To
Mary") and all after page 58, is in