Lot 211: MOORE, THOMAS

Lalla Rookh, An Oriental Romance. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1817

4to (11 x 8 1/4 in.; 280 x 210 mm). Engraved title-page and 5 engraved plates by Charles Heath after Richard Westall; title-page and plates foxed and offsetting, occasional light paper discoloration. Contemporary English olive straight-grained morocco by Dawson & Lewis, richly paneled gilt, border of interlaced fillets enclosing a frame of lyres and foliate scrolls, pointillé ground cartouche stamped with a wreathed lyre at center, the spine in 5 compartments with interlaced fillets and wide raised bands, dentelles tooled in gilt and blind, pointillé corners forming a succession of circles in the center, interspersed by 4 interlaced filleted stretchers, crimson paper doublures and flyleaves, edges gilt and gauffered with an oriental floral motif; joints lightly rubbed. Morocco tipped slipcase.

Countess of Bessborough (engraved monogram on flyleaf) ? Robert Hoe (morocco ticket on doublure) ? Cortlandt F. Bishop (morocco tickets and sale, American Art Association/Anderson Galleries, 25-27 April 1938, lot 1571)

First edition, in a resplendent English binding . The Robert Hoe-Cortlandt F. Bishop copy. James Perry, a good friend of Moore's and proprietor of the the Morning Chronicle (the leading Whig journal of the day), Longmans paid Moore £3,000 for a poem "upon some Oriental subject, and of those Quarto dimensions which Scott... had rendered the regular poetical standard." The resulting poem consists of four romances told to the beautiful Lalla Rookh as she and her bridal party make their procession from Delhi to Cashmere. The work went through twenty editions as well as numerous translations by 1840 (Jack, English Literature, vol. 2: pp. 166-167).