After the monumental success of his Highland poem The Lady of the Lake (1810), for his next historical epic poem, Walter Scott moved the setting to England, perhaps to appease his increasing English readership. After several abortive attempts between 1811 and 1812, the poem, entitled Rokeby, was published in 1813. Set in County Durham during the English Civil Wars, in the immediate aftermath of the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, Rokeby was inspired by Scott’s visits to his friend John Morritt on his Teesdale estate of the same name. Starting on the estate, the action swiftly moved to neighbouring Barnard Castle and contained many of the dramatic elements that made Scott’s poetry so engaging to his readers: murder, revenge and romance. However, audiences did not take to Rokeby as they had his earlier works and despite good reviews, sales failed to cover Scott’s expenses and added to the financial difficulties of his publisher, John Ballantyne & Co. This may have been because unlike his first-hand experiences of and research into the Scottish settings of his other poems, Scott relied on descriptions of scenery and local history from Morritt, to whom Rokeby was dedicated. The poem also followed in the wake of the publication of Lord Byron’s scandalous Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), which had changed public expectations of what a modern poem should be. In response, Scott was reported to have exclaimed that ‘Byron be[a]t me’, and soon turned to prose, publishing his first novel Waverley, or ‘tis sixty years since anonymously in 1814. Nevertheless, Scott became an important early supporter of Byron’s poetry.
While not as popular as his other poems, it is apparent that the future Queen Victoria enjoyed reading Rokeby when she read it in 1836-7, noting in her Journal on 1 November 1836:
“There are two lines in Rokeby, (which is so full of beauty, that I could copy the whole & not find one part which is not full of loveliness, sweetness, grace, elegance & feeling. For the immortal bard, who wrote these beautiful Poems never could write an ugly line in my opinion)…Oh, Walter Scott is my beau ideal of a Poet; I do so admire him both in Poetry and Prose!”

This copy of the first edition of Rokeby, one of only 25 printed in quarto on large paper, was probably acquired by George IV when Prince Regent. At the head of the half title page, a note indicates that the sheets had been chosen for Scott himself by his printer James Ballantyne.