FIRST EDITION, a notorious forgery of the period; Moxon published them in good faith, having bought the 23 letters at a Sotheby & Wilkinson sale in 1851. They had been put in the sale by the bookseller William White who in turn had purchased them from Major George Gordon, an imposter claiming to be Lord Byron's natural son. Having dragged Browning into the affair the forgery was detected and Moxon sought to withdraw all copies of the book which is consequently scarce if not actually rare, existing copies usually found finely bound up like this for the late 19th Century first edition market.