London: Jonathan Cape & John Murray, 1949. Item #1499

8vo. 225 x 155 mm., [8 ¾ x 6 inches]. 533 pp. with eight separate leaves of plates inserted between pages of text and including the following Appendices: Byron’s Letters in Italian; Unpublished Documents and Bibliography; List of Byron’s Letters in the Gamba Collection; Notes to the Text; Index. With eight black and white illustrations on separate plates including two facsimile reproductions of letters between Byron and Teresa Guiccioli. Publishers’ blue cloth over boards with gilt lettering on the spine and a decorative device in gilt stamped on the front cover based on the T and B found in the Byron-Guiccioli correspondence; dust jacket missing. Book is Good: heavy fading of the spine; moderate soiling and shelf wear; corners lightly bumped; some soiling and foxing on the endpapers; otherwise in fairly good condition with the text block clean and the gatherings tight in their binding.

First Edition. Dame Iris Margaret Origo, DBE (1902-1988) was an Anglo-American biographer and writer who dedicated considerable time to the rehabilitation of her agricultural estate, La Foce, in Tuscany and is best-known today for publishing a series of diaries reflecting on her time in Italy during the second World War. Her first book, Allegra (1935), was a biography of Lord Byron’s daughter Clara Allegra Byron. In The Last Attachment Orego further develops her interest in the great Romantic poet by exploring his affair with Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli. Using previously unpublished letters that were kept by Teresa and passed on in her family, she crafts a portrait of the two lovers that aims to preserve the nuances of what was a complex relationship that defied simple moral categories or clichéd characterizations.

Price: $40.00