Rokeby Park of Venus by Diego Velázquez, now known in English as The Rokeby Venus. The original now hangs in the National Gallery, London and a copy hangs in the saloon at Rokeby Park. Sir Walter Scott was a regular visitor to the house, and used it as the setting to his epic poem "Rokeby" in 1812. The building is also of interest in its own right. Completed in 1735 (and known at the time as Rokeby Hall) by Sir Thomas Robinson, it is considered a fine example of the italianate Palladian style. Robinson owned it until 1769, when he sold it
Rokeby (poem) J. G. Lockhart reported that bookshops in Oxford were besieged by customers wanting to read the poem, and bets were placed as to whether "Rokeby" would outsell Byron's recent "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". Byron himself wrote urgently from Italy asking his publisher John Murray to send him a copy. In the event "Rokeby" sold ten thousand copies in the first three months, a figure which would have been the making of any other poet, but which was a marked falling-off from the sales of Scott's previous poems, and far less than he needed to pay his Abbotsford debts. One consequence of