Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Byron, George Gordon; Lord Byron. Don Juan. [Cantos I - V].. Thomas Davison, London, 1820.
Price: US$207.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: Binding on both volumes is poor. On both, hinges are cracked but holding and pieces of the spine are missing. Vol. 1 published 1820, 227 pp. interior clean & tight. Vol. 2 published 1821, 218 pp. interior heavily foxed w/ 1/8" water stain on pp. 1-60. Please view photo(s) to determine exact condition.
Seller: Novelty Shop Used & Rare Books, Novelty, OH, U.S.A.
[Byron, Lord George Gordon]. Don Juan (Canto I - II) [Second Edition]. Thomas Davison, London, 1820.
Price: US$341.25 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: [viii], 227 pp. Includes blanks and has what look to be original card covers bound in. Each Canto has a separate TP but pagination is continuous. A small octavo. Modern and very handsome full leather binding with 5 raised bands, red and gilt spine labels, marbled end papers. The top edge of the front card cover is worn and chipped with some foxing, the first few pages around the card covers have some foxing, otherwise the text is clean and nice. Lord Byron wrote his satyrical epic Romantic poem, Don Juan, over the period 1819-1824. This is the second edition of the first two cantos, published shortly after the first. "Lord Byron derived the character of Don Juan from traditional Spanish folk legends, however the story was very much his own. Upon publication in 1819, cantos I and II were widely criticized as immoral because Byron had so freely ridiculed the social subjects and public figures of his time. .The poetical narrative of Don Juan is told in sixteen thousand lines, arranged in seventeen cantos, written in ottava rima ; each stanza is composed of eight iambic pentameters, with the couplet rhyme scheme of AB AB AB CC. The ottava rima uses the final rhyming couplet as a line of humour, to achieve a rhetorical anticlimax by way of an abrupt transition, from a lofty style of writing to a vulgar style of writing. In the example passage from Don Juan, canto I, stanza 1, lines 36, the Spanish name Juan is obviously pronounced JOO-ehn, to fit the rhyme. "Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant, The age discovers he is not the true one; Of such as these I should not care to vaunt, I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan"; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 227 pages
Seller: Leaf and Stone Books, Toronto, ON, Canada
Price: US$935.00 + shipping
Description: Six volumes bound in three. Demy-octavos (16.5cm); contemporary full diced calf; bound including original title pages; half-titles and terminal leaves where called for. An attractive set in contemporary binding, sympathetically re-backed preserving the original endpapers as well as most of the original spines and spine labels. Early printed bookplate of John Colston to each front pastedown, with later inked ex-libris ("J. Hames") added beneath each printed portion. The full foolscap octavo edition of Don Juan, preceded in each case by quarto editions in the same year. Cantos I-II are from an early but not first printing, with 1820 date at base of title page but no statement of "New Edition" (as seems somewhat common, though this issue appears unmentioned by Wise). The remaining volumes are first printings. WISE II, p.3-8.
Seller: Lorne Bair Rare Books, ABAA, Winchester, VA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1976.09 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: Opera completa in sei volumi. Testo inglese. Cm.17,8x10,5. Pg.(4), 228; (4), 218; VIII, (2), 184, (2); 151, (5); 170, (2); 12, 130, (2). I primi due volumi sono impressi da Davison, i rimanenti da C.H. Reynell per John Hunt. Terzo volume da rilegare. Tutti i tasselli cartacei, con titoli e prezzo (7 s.), sono conservati ai dorsi. Il primo volume (1820) contiene i primi due Canti, il secondo (1821) i Canti III-V, il terzo (1823) i Canti VI-VIII, il quarto (1823) i Canti IX-XI, il quinto (1823) i Canti XII-XIV, il sesto (1824) i Canti XV-XVI. Eccetto il primo volume, pubblicato nel 1819 in formato più grande, i rimanenti cinque sono in prima edizione. Ex libris Casley. "In English literature, Don Juan, written from 1819 to 1824 by the English poet Lord Byron, is a satirical, epic poem which portrays the Spanish folk legend of Don Juan, not as a womaniser as the character is historically portrayed, but as a victim easily seduced by women. As genre literature, Don Juan is an epic poem, written in ottava rima and presented in sixteen cantos. Lord Byron derived the character of Don Juan from traditional Spanish folk legends, however the story was very much his own. Upon publication in 1819, cantos I and II were widely criticized as immoral because Byron had so freely ridiculed the social subjects and public figures of his time. At his death in 1824, Lord Byron had completed sixteen of seventeen cantos, whilst canto XVII remained unfinished. Byron was a prolific writer, for whom "the composition of his great poem, Don Juan, was coextensive with a major part of his poetical life"; he wrote the first canto in late 1818, and the seventeenth canto in early 1823.[3] Canto I was written in September 1818, and canto II was written from December 1818 to January 1819. Cantos III and IV were written in the winter of 1819?1820 and canto V was written in October?November 1820. Cantos I and II were published on 15 July 1819, and cantos III, IV, and V were published on 8 August 1821. Byron began to write canto VI in June 1822, and had completed writing canto XVI in March 1823. Given the moralistic notoriety of the satirical, epic poem, John Murray refused to publish the latter cantos of Don Juan, which then were entrusted to John Hunt, who published the cantos over a period of months; cantos VI, VII, and VIII, with a Preface, were published on 15 July 1823; cantos IX, X, and XI were published on 29 August 1823; cantos XII, XIII, and XIV were published on 17 December 1823; and cantos XV and XVI on 26 March 1824" (da Wikipedia). > Tinker, 571. Lowndes, I, 339. 1200 gr.
Seller: studio bibliografico pera s.a.s., LUCCA, Italy
Price: US$2524.00 + shipping
Description: First two vols with half titles. Five vols in orig. drab paper boards, one in blue paper boards with brown paper spine, four paper labels intact; five vols. sl. chipped at head & tail, spine defective on final vol. with front & rear board detached. Booklabel of A.W. Hutton in each vol.; vols II, III, V & VI with bookseller label, Jellett of Belfast. Very early small format editions in original boards. Elkin Mathews 298, describing these as the first foolscap 8vo edition; Wise vol. II p.8, acknowledging foolscap 8vo editions from Cantos VI onwards only. Murray under the Davison imprint, appears not to have published small format editions of Cantos I & II and III-V until the year after the original publication, whereas Hunt published foolscap 8vo editions of Cantos VI-XVI concurrently. i. Cantos I & II. Thomas Davison, 1820. (First pub. 1819) ii. Cantos III-V. 5th edn. Thomas Davison, 1822. (First pub. 1821) iii. Cantos VI-VIII. John Hunt, 1823. 2pp ads. (July, 1823) iv. Cantos IX-XI. John Hunt, 1823. 4pp ads. (Sept. 1823) v. Cantos XII-XIV. John Hunt, 1823. 2pp ads. (Dec. 1823) vi. Cantos XV & XVI. John & H.L. Hunt, 1824. 2pp ads. (March, 1824)
Seller: Jarndyce, The 19th Century Booksellers, London, United Kingdom