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Creasy Spines

“Every crease is a story.”

Illustration of the kind of find described. We don't reproduce press photographs.
Inscription· 1810s

Lord Byron’s poem written inside a friend’s gift

By the Editors · As reported by UCL News, January 2006

FoundLondon, United Kingdom

Tucked inside The Pleasures of Memory (1810) by Samuel Rogers

Cataloguing the strong-room collections at University College London, librarian Susan Stead opened an 1810 copy of Samuel Rogers’s The Pleasures of Memory inscribed by Rogers to Lord Byron. A second note explained that Byron had returned it with lines added. Overleaf, in Byron’s hand, was a twelve-line poem on friendship and memory, signed in Greek letters and dated April 1812. The poem was printed in 1816, but no autograph manuscript had been known.

This is our summary of a find reported in the press. For the full story, photographs and any updates, read the original report in UCL News.

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