Armenia

Venice, In the Island of S.Lazzaro, 1870. Full calf, 6 1/4 inches tall. A beautiful little Victorian binding by Birdsall in full pink calf with gilt raised bands, green label and 'fish scale' gilt tooling. Byron worshiped and studied Armenian at the Monastery of San Lazzaro in 1816 and 1817 with the Makhitarist Monks while visiting Venice. This extraordinary and very rare volume is the first edition of the texts that he translated with the parallel texts in Armenian. A neat previous owners inscription, dated 1888 is found on the second blank and there are slight scratched on the binding, otherwise pristine.