Moore’s account of Fugitive Pieces is that it was distributed in November, Byron presenting the first copy to the Reverend J.T.  Becher, prebendary of Southwell minster, who objected to what he considered the too voluptuous coloring of the poem “To Mary.”  The objection led Byron to suppress the edition immediately, he himself burning nearly every copy.  This account is corroborated in part by Miss Pigot and in part by Byron.

Immediately after the destruction, Byron began the preparation of a second volume, to replace Fugitive Pieces.  This appeared in January, 1807, as Poems on Various Occasions, Byron describing it as “vastly correct and miraculously chaste.”  Of the 38 poems that constitute Fugitive Pieces, all except “To Mary,” “To Caroline,” and the last six stanzas of “To Miss E.P.” were reprinted in Poems on Various Occasions.  Nineteen of the original 38 poems occur in Byron’s third work, Hours of Idleness, published in June or July, 1807.  All three editions were printed by S. and J. Ridge, booksellers of Newark, England.

Byron himself never reprinted the poems “To Mary” or “To Caroline,” or the last six stanzas of “To Miss E.P.”  Except in a limited facsimile of Fugitive Pieces, supervised by H. Buxton Forman in 1886, “To Mary” has never been reprinted—­not even in supposedly complete editions of Byron’s works.

Only four copies of Fugitive Pieces are known to-day, and one of these is incomplete.  The copy from which the present facsimile is made was originally given by Byron to Becher and preserved by him in spite of his objections to the poem “To Mary.”  From Becher’s family it passed into the possession of Mr. Faulkner, of Louth, solicitor for the Becher family.  In 1885 it was in the possession of H.W.  Ball, antiquary and bookseller of Barton-on-Humber, who sold it to H. Buxton Forman.  Forman used it for his facsimile, but incorporated certain manuscript corrections of the original, so that his facsimile is not exact.  The original is now owned by Mr. Thomas J. Wise, who has kindly permitted its use for the present facsimile.

Of the other three copies, the incomplete one, lacking pages 17-20 ("To Mary”) and all after page 58, is in the possession of the family of the late Mr. H.C.  Roe, of Nottingham.  This was originally sent by Byron to Pigot, then studying medicine in Edinburgh.  Byron later asked Pigot to destroy the copy and Pigot seems to have complied so far as to tear out the offending verses “To Mary.”  For many years it was thought that only the Pigot and Becher copies had escaped destruction at Byron’s hands.  But another complete copy came to light in 1907 and is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.  This contains numerous manuscript corrections and alterations, and seems to have been used as a proof copy for Poems on Various Occasions (not, as has sometimes been stated, for Hours of Idleness).  A fourth copy, also complete, was offered at public sale in 1912, and is now in the hands of the executors of the late Mr. J.A.  Spoor, of Chicago.