Lalla Rookh.

Full red leather with gilt diamond design on the boards. Gilt squared design and title on the spine. Has the name plate of Robert Ewing Curwen on the paste down. The Getty museum lists that name as a photographer.

Though rarely heard of today Lalla Rookh is the most popular romantic poem of early Victorian literature earning the Irish writer £3,000 in 1817 (some 200,000 in today's money) – the most ever then paid for a poem. This 1828 rendition is well illustrated by Richard Westall, Queen Victoria's drawing master Though exceedingly rare in this format, this book has extensive foxing as is seen on the front page with scattered fox spotting throughout: hence the relative price.

Lalla Rookh is an Oriental romance by Irish poet Thomas Moore, published in 1817. The title is taken from the name of the heroine of the frame tale, the (fictional) daughter of the 17th-century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The work consists of four narrative poems with a connecting tale in prose. The name Lalla Rookh or Lala-Rukh is an endearment frequently used in Persian poetry. The name Lalla Rookh or Lala-Rukh means "tulip-cheeked" and is an endearment frequently used in Persian poetry. Lalla Rookh has also been translated as "rosy-cheeked"; however, the first word derives from the Persian word for tulip, laleh, and a different word, laal, means rosy, or ruby. Tulips were first cultivated in Persia, probably in the 10th century, and remain a powerful symbol in Iranian culture, and the name Laleh is a popular girl's name. Rukh also translates as "face". Lalla Rookh is a fictional daughter of Emperor Aurangzeb; he had no daughter of this name. Moore set his poem in a sumptuous oriental setting on the advice of Lord Byron. The work was completed in 1817 while Moore was living in a house in the countryside of Hornsey, Middlesex, and the house was renamed, possibly by Moore himself, after the poem. THE PLOT - Engaged to the young king of Bukhara, Lalla Rookh goes forth to meet him, but falls in love with Feramorz, a poet from her entourage. The bulk of the work consists of four interpolated tales sung by the poet: "The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan" (loosely based upon the story of Al-Muqanna), "Paradise and the Peri", "The Fire-Worshippers", and "The Light of the Harem". When Lalla Rookh enters the palace of her bridegroom she swoons away, but revives at the sound of a familiar voice. She awakes with rapture to find that the poet she loves is none other than the king to whom she is engaged. Legacy The poem, which earned the highest price ever thus far for a poem (£3,000), and enhanced Moore's reputation considerably at the time. The popularity of the poem and its subsequent adaptations gave rise to many ships being named Lalla Rookh during the 19th century. Alfred Joseph Woolmer painted "Lalla Rookh" in 1861, depicting Hinda, daughter of the Emir of Arabia, in a tower overlooking the Persian Gulf, based on the story called "The Fire-Worshippers" in the poem. It is now housed in the Leicester Museum & Art Gallery. It is also credited with having made Kashmir (spelt Cashmere in the poem) "a household term in Anglophone societies", conveying the idea that it was a kind of paradise (an old idea going back to Hindu and Buddhist texts in Sanskrit. Mystic Order of Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm (founded 1889), often known as "the Grotto", a social group with membership restricted to Master Masons, and its female auxiliary, the Daughters of Mokanna (founded 1919), also take their names from Thomas Moore's poem. A tomb in Hassanabdal, Pakistan, dating from the Mughal Empire, is known as tomb of Princess Lalarukh. Some historians and others say that there is a woman called Lalarukh from the household of Emperor Humayun buried here after dying on a journey from Kashmir, while others claim that she was the daughter of Emperor Aurangzeb. The tomb was first recorded as the Tomb of Lady Lalarukh in 1905, which historians suggest was derived from Moore's popular work and named by British officers in the time of British India. In George Eliot's 1871/1872 novel Middlemarch, it is said of the character Rosamond Vincy, "Her favourite poem was 'Lalla Rookh'" (Chapter 16).

Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852) was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. Their setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot. Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation Moore was seen to defend the tradition of the Church in Ireland against both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies. The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald depicts the United Irish leader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform. Complementing Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Memoirs of Captain Rock is a saga, not of Anglo-Irish landowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to the semi-insurrection of "Whiteboyism". Today, however, Moore is remembered almost alone either for his Irish Melodies (typically "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Last Rose of Summer") or, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron

. Richard Westall RA (2 January 1765 – 4 December 1836) was an English painter and illustrator of portraits, historical and literary events, best known for his portraits of Byron. He was also Queen Victoria's drawing master.