English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers.: A Satire

London: James Cawthorn, [1809]. First edition. 8vo. vi, 54 pp., with half-title. Full red morocco, gilt interlacing strapwork design on covers and spine, top edge gilt, rest uncut, original printed paper covers removed from boards, backed and bound in, green watered silk doublures endpapers, by Zaehnsdorf (stamped on front turn-in and dated 1898, exhibition blind stamp on rear doublure); rebacked with spine laid-down and some loss to lettering, paper covers spotted, old mildew spot on several margins The Frank Hogan copy of the first edition of Byron's satiric response to Henry Brougham's negative review of Hours of Idleness in the Edinburgh Review. Byron also take aim at the journal's editor, Francis Jeffrey, along with many of his contemporaries — Coleridge, Southey, Scott, and Wordsworth included. Byron later recanted some of his criticism, writing in an annotated copy of the 1811 fourth edition, "The greater part of this is satire I most sincerely wish had never been written — not only on account of the injustice of much of the criticism & the personal part of it — but the tone & temper are such as I cannot approve. Byron July 14th 1816. Diodati — Geneva" (see First Edition Club Byron exhibition no. 4b, lent by John Murray). With "E & P 1805" watermark on B3, D1 and F1 — subsequent editions have later watermarks — and with B3 in first state, line 7 reading "Despetch." A tall uncut copy in a Zaehnsdorf exhibition binding preserving the original printed paper board covers.PROVENANCE: Frank Hogan (red morocco book-plate, his sale Parke-Bernet, 1945); J.O. Edwards (book-label)REFERENCES: Hayward 291; Randolph, pp. 14-18; Wise, I, 21