Poems by Lord Byron — Red Letter Library, Blackie & Son (c.1904–1906)

Opening

Someone inscribed this book on the 12th of February 1906. Cecile Mary Davies, in a careful cursive hand, just above the red-printed words Red Letter Library. She paid 1 shilling and sixpence for it — the price is pencilled inside the front board. Byron had been dead for eighty-two years. He had never been more fashionable.

The Book

Poems by Lord Byron is a selected anthology of Byron's poetry, published by Blackie and Son Ltd of London as part of their Red Letter Library series, with an introduction by Arthur Symons. The volume is undated on its title page; on the basis of the inscription dated February 12th, 1906, the series context, and Blackie's publication records, this copy was published c.1904–1906. The title page reads: Poems by Lord Byron / With an Introduction by Arthur Symons / Blackie & Son Ltd · London. The spine is gilt-lettered: BYRON. The printing code (B 213) appears at the foot of the contents pages.

The book opens with an unnumbered Art Nouveau decorative endpaper — an interlaced vine-and-blossom pattern printed in olive on cream stock — followed by a frontispiece portrait of Byron framed in the same interlaced Art Nouveau border used for the title page. The title page itself is a full typographic design set within the same decorated border, printed in black on cream. Arthur Symons's introduction precedes the contents pages, which run across three pages (pp. vii–ix). The text of the poems runs to p. 279, followed by a Note (p. 279). The series printer's code (B 213) identifies this as the 213th volume in Blackie's production sequence for the series.

The selection covers Byron's full range: political and satirical verse (The Vision of Judgment, p. 1; Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, p. 57); war poems (Waterloo, p. 73; The Glory of War, p. 234; A Battlefield, p. 237; Wellington, p. 245); lyric poems (She walks in Beauty, p. 136; When we two Parted, p. 137; So, we'll go no more a roving, p. 148; Stanzas for Music, p. 135); narrative and descriptive verse (The Prisoner of Chillon, p. 85; Mazeppa's Ride, p. 106; The Shipwreck, p. 198); Italian scenes (Venice, p. 116; Rome, p. 120; The Falls of Terni, p. 111; The Coliseum, p. 101; An August Evening on the Brenta, p. 114); and substantial selections from Don Juan (Dedication, p. 161; Juan and Julia, p. 176; The Shipwreck, p. 198; Juan and Haidee, p. 211; Don Juan at St. Petersburg, p. 251). The volume closes with the two deathbed birthday poems: On my Thirty-third Birthday (p. 276) and On this day I complete my Thirty-sixth year (p. 277), written at Missolonghi in January 1824, three months before Byron's death.

The Editor: Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was born in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and became the leading English critic and champion of the French Symbolist movement. He joined the Rhymers' Club — the circle of poets around W. B. Yeats and Ernest Dowson — contributed to The Yellow Book, and edited its successor The Savoy (1896) with Aubrey Beardsley as art editor. His landmark study The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) introduced Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Huysmans to English readers, directly influencing both Yeats and T. S. Eliot. His critical writing developed Walter Pater's model of the aesthetic critic into a sustained programme of European literary introduction.

Symons suffered a severe mental breakdown in 1908 — triggered by a collapse in Venice — and was confined to an asylum for two years. He recovered to produce further criticism and travel writing, but the intense originality of his 1890s work never fully returned. He died in Wittersham, Kent, in 1945 at the age of seventy-nine. His Byron introduction for the Red Letter Library was written at the height of his critical powers, in the period immediately following The Symbolist Movement and his two-volume Poems (1902). Symons had also edited Shakespeare editions earlier in his career — four of Quaritch's Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles (1884–1886) and seven plays of the Henry Irving Shakespeare (1888–1889) — establishing him as a recognised editor of canonical English poetry before he undertook the Romantic series for Blackie.

The Red Letter Library

Blackie and Son was founded in Glasgow in 1809 and operated until 1991, publishing across educational textbooks, children's books, and literary series throughout the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Their Glasgow and London operations ran in parallel; the firm's archive and its children's and school textbook records (1882–1976) are held at the University of Glasgow Library.

The Red Letter Library was one of Blackie's popular literary series designed for the Edwardian mass-reading market, positioned alongside their Sixpenny Classics and aimed at a larger reading public seeking well-designed pocket editions of canonical authors. The series is notable for its binding design: dark green pebbled cloth with gold Art Nouveau ornament on the front board and spine, Art Nouveau decorated endpapers in olive on cream, and frontispiece portraits enclosed in matching Art Nouveau borders. The designer responsible for Blackie's distinctive Edwardian decorative style was Talwin Morris (1865–1911), who joined the firm as art director in 1893 and transformed Blackie's visual identity into one of the most recognisable expressions of Glasgow Style Art Nouveau in British book design. Other volumes in the series included Poems by Milton (published 1905) and editions of Scott, Shelley, and Tennyson.

The Inscription

The half-title page carries a pencilled ownership inscription: Cecile Mary Davies, Feby 12th 1906 — Valentine's Day is two days away — written above the red-printed series title Red Letter Library. A second pencilled notation on the rear free endpaper reads 1/6 m, almost certainly recording the purchase price of one shilling and sixpence. The inscription establishes this copy's date of ownership with precision and places it squarely in the book's period of first circulation. The name Cecile Mary Davies is a relatively common Edwardian Welsh or West Country name, and no further identification has been established.

The Poet

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788–1824), was born in London and educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He inherited the barony in 1798 and took his seat in the House of Lords in 1809, the same year he left for the Grand Tour that produced Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. His fame after the publication of the first two cantos in 1812 was immediate and total: he famously remarked that he awoke one morning and found himself famous. He spent the second half of his life in self-imposed exile from England — in Switzerland with Percy and Mary Shelley in 1816, then in Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa — writing Don Juan throughout. In 1823 he joined the Greek War of Independence and died of fever at Missolonghi on 19 April 1824, aged thirty-six. He is buried in the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.

Bibliographic Details

Author: George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788–1824)

Editor / Introduction: Arthur Symons (1865–1945)

Publisher: Blackie and Son Ltd, London

Series: Red Letter Library

Printer's code: B 213

Date: Undated; c.1904–1906 (inscription dated February 12th, 1906)

Inscription: Cecile Mary Davies, Feby 12th 1906 — half-title

Price (pencilled): 1/6 (one shilling and sixpence)

Binding: Dark green pebbled cloth, gilt Art Nouveau ornament; Art Nouveau endpapers

Cover design: Talwin Morris (Blackie art director, 1893–1911)

Format: Small hardback, 279 pp + Note