Fugitive Pieces

Excerpt

Fugitive Pieces, Byron's first volume of verse, was privately printed in the autumn of 1806, when Byron was eighteen years of age. Passages in Byron's correspondence indicate that as early as August of that year some of the poems were in the printers' hands and that during the latter part of August and during September the printing was suspended in order that Byron might give his poems an "entire new form." The new form consisted, in part, in an enlargement; for he wrote to Elizabeth Pigot about September that he had nearly doubled his poems "partly by the discovery of some I conceived to be lost, and partly by some new productions." According to Moore, Fugitive Pieces was ready for distribution in November. The last poem in the volume bears the date of November 16, 1806.