The Corsair, A Tale (First edition, First issue)

Lord Byron's The Corsair, A Tale. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE. 1814 London: John Murray. 1814. 8vo. 108 pp. Bound in light brown calf, with gilt tooling, marbled endpapers. This narrative poem about the pirate Conrad, this poem was ORIGINALLY printed as 108 pages AS IN THIS COPY; the second and third issues were released without the last four leaves containing "To a Lady Weeping," because of the controversy the poem had generated on the very first day after publication of this very first issue. However, Randolph states that all four of the four "issues" of the first edition were available and issued to the public on the same day. NOTE (as per King's College, London)-- Following Byron's initial requests to his publisher to make public his authorship of 'Lines to a Lady Weeping' by publishing the verses with The Corsair, Murray cautioned on 20 January 1814 that "as the present work is to be read by women & the lines would disturb the political feeling, they should instead be slipped quietly into a volume republishing Childe Harold Cantos I and II." Byron reacted, in this letter, by insisting that the verses be published with The Corsair. "The lines "to a Lady weeping" must go with the Corsair – I care nothing for consequences on this point – my politics are to me like a young mistress to an old man the worse they grow the fonder I become of them." When the authorship of 'Lines' became known, it provoked a vicious backlash against Byron in the Tory press and the eight pages were dropped in later issues.