Poems.: [together with] Italy, a Poem.

London: T. Cadell and E. Moxon; T. Cadell, Jennings and Chaplin, and E. Moxon,, 1834 & 1830. First Turner and Stothard editions, attractively bound by the leading British bookbinder Rivière. Rogers visited Italy for the first time in 1814, and it was during this trip that he envisioned the concept for his famous poem. The first edition – part I published in 1821 and part II in 1828 – was not well received; therefore, Rogers engaged Thomas Stothard and J. M. W. Turner to illustrate a new luxury publication (the present one), regarded as "one of the outstanding examples of the illustrated book in the first half of the nineteenth century" (ODNB). Stothard's figure scenes in this volume are considered "perhaps the climax" of his illustration, and Turner's landscapes are "his first outstanding success with steel... The success of Italy persuaded Rogers to undertake a similar costly edition of his Poems which was published in 1834 with thirty-three vignettes after Turner. Turner - himself a writer of poetry and clearly very sympathetic to that of Samuel Rogers - created some of his most telling images for these two beautiful books, which established him as the leading illustrator of the day" (ibid.). Two works, small quarto (204 x 132 mm). Late 19th-century red crushed morocco by Rivière, spines with raised bands, gilt lettering and intricate floral decoration in compartments, covers, board edges, and turn-ins bordered with gilt fillets and floral tools, marbled endpapers, edges gilt. Both volumes with engraved vignettes from designs by J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Stothard throughout. Poems bound without advertisements; Italy bound without "by the same author" leaf at end. Gilt bright, spines slightly darkened, contents clean. A handsome set.