First edition. The title-poem, ‘Ugolino; or, The Tower of Famine’, takes its subject from events in the life of Ugolino della Gherardesca (c. 1220-1289), Count of Donoratico, the bellicose head of the Gherardesca family which was the leading Ghibelline house of Pisa during the 13th century. Ugolino forged an alliance with the rival Visconti family, leaders of the Guelph faction in the city, but a series of political and military conflicts created instability in Pisa, which only ended with a clash with Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, the leader of the Ghibellines, who vanquished Ugolino on 1 July 1288. Ugolino, his son, and grandsons were captured, charged with treason, and incarcerated in Pisa’s Torre dei Gualandi, where they eventually starved to death. One of the earliest accounts of these events is found in Giovanni Villani’s early-14th-century Cronica, but the story achieved a lasting fame through its inclusion in Dante’s Inferno, where Ugolino is placed in Antenor (a realm populated by those who betray their people) in the ninth circle of hell.

In his ‘Preface’ Wilmot explains that his poem is not ‘a mere imitation’ of Dante’s narrative (which also inspired Shelley’s ‘The Tower of Famine’) or Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ (which had been published in 1816 and was loosely based on another historical imprisonment), but that ‘its groundwork differs in some material points from Dante’s tale, the dramatis personæ being in one case a father and his four sons; in the other [sc. ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’], a father, two sons, and two infant grand-children: this is on the authority of Villani, who says, “the Pisans imprisoned the Count Ugolino with two of his sons and two of his grand-children, the offspring of his son, the Count Guelfo,” &c. Besides this difference, in Dante’s magnificent but rapid sketch, many points of minor interest have been omitted which are yet deserving of attention’ (pp. iv-v). Wilmot’s poem is prefaced by the ‘Advertisement’, which reprints two lengthy extracts from Villani’s account of Ugolino, and his ‘Sonnet. To the Manes of those who were Starved by the Pisans in the Tower of Famine’.

‘Ugolino; or, The Tower of Famine’ is followed by three further poems – ‘The Broken Heart: A Fragment’, ‘The Maniac’s Song’, and ‘Gipsy Scenes’ – and the collection, which was advertised for sale at the price of 5s., appears to have been well received. One contemporary reviewer judged that ‘[t]here are considerable felicity of poetical thought, and a good ear for versification, displayed in this poem’, before concluding that ‘Mr. Wilmot has, undoubtedly, great poetical taste, and considerable poetical talent. [...]. We shall be very glad [...] to see his hand again, whether in verse or prose’ (The London Magazine, no. IV (July 1828), pp. 613-615), while another opined that ‘on the whole, this is a very pleasing little volume, and deserves a happy fate’ (The Athenæum, no. 38 (16 July 1828), p. 596).

Interestingly, the title-poem may have been adapted for the stage by the prolific playwright and author Edward Fitzball (1793-1873), some years before it was collected in this volume; Fitzball’s Ugolino; or, The Tower of Famine was performed at the Surrey Theatre, London on 26 December 1821 (cf. L.S. Clifton, The Terrible Fitzball: The Melodramatist of the Macabre (Bowling Green, OH, 1993), p. 188).

T.W. Koch, Catalogue of the Dante Collection Presented by Willard Fiske, II, p. 490.

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