Romantic Circles Blog

The Byron Society of America announced January 22, 2010 that it has chosen Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, as the new home for its Byron Society Collection. The collection of almost 5,000 items, including rare books, portraits, letters, and other priceless material, will be housed with the Drew Library’s special collections, where students, scholars, and members of the public will be able to access it. Robert Weisbuch, president of Drew University and a specialist in nineteenth-century British and American writers, stated in his welcome: “The arrival of this collection will provide a feast of research opportunities for scholars and undergraduates alike.”

Included in the Byron Society Collection are letters from Mrs. Byron, Thomas Moore, and Lady Byron, and the splendid collection of 1,900 volumes, including many early and rare editions, together with 600 booklets and 60 material objects belonging to collector Michael Rees, former secretary of the International Council of Byron Societies. Papers, correspondence, books, and photographs once owned by the late Leslie A. Marchand, author of Byron: A Biography, and editor of Byron’s Letters and Journals, likewise form an essential part of the collection’s holdings. The collection also includes visual representations of the poet, such as Rembrandt Peale’s 1825 lithograph of Byron, as well as statuary, mezzotints and engravings, Staffordshire figures, and decorative and other material objects that demonstrate the impact of Byron’s life and works on his readers, both past and present.

“The deposit of the Byron Society’s important archive of books and cultural materials in the Drew University Library is one of those events that do not often capture public attention,” noted Jerome McGann, editor of Byron: The Complete Poetical Works. “But it is a moment in the history of the university where its commitment to the preservation of our cultural heritage is clearly displayed.”

Drew University (http://www.drew.edu) is known for its special collections and archives, including distinctive holdings on Willa Cather, Walt Whitman, John Wesley, and the history of world Methodism. Discussions between Drew and the Byron Society began when it became known that the university had been given the coveted Byron and Whitman holdings of private collector Norman Tomlinson.

“Drew is the natural home for the Byron Society Collection,” commented Marsha Manns, chair of the Byron Society of America and co-founder, with Leslie A. Marchand, of the Byron Society Collection. The library’s current holdings, including the Tomlinson Byron Collection, along with the value placed on collections of material culture and the university’s willingness to provide wide access to the collection, were all important considerations for the society.” Scholars agree. “The settlement of the Byron Society Collection at Drew University opens exciting new opportunities for research and teaching in material culture,” said William St Clair, author of The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period and That Greece Might Still Be Free, “Given the rich collections already there and Drew’s pioneering work in studying the reception and diffusion of ideas, I see a perfect fit. Many scholars and others will wish to be associated with this imaginative project.”

The Byron Society of America (http://www.byronsociety.org) is a non-profit literary organization founded to study the life and works of the English Romantic poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), whose immense cultural impact extends from the nineteenth century to the present day. The Society is one of forty societies representing forty countries that collectively comprise the International Byron Society.

For further information, please contact membernews@byronsociety.org.

The diary of John Cam Hobhouse on the Web has undergone some changes. It’s current location at www.Hobby-O.com has moved to the Blog site of Peter Cochran at http://petercochran.wordpress.com/hobhouses-diary/. With the move comes significant new content, including full coverage from the years 1809-1824 and new material from Hobhouse’s time in London and Switzerland.

From the foreword to the Hobhouse diary:

John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869) was Byron’s best friend. Educated at Westminster and Trinity College Cambridge, he travelled east with Byron in 1809, was Best Man at Byron’s wedding in 1815, travelled across Switzerland in Byron’s company in 1816 after the separation, around Rome with Byron in 1817, and lived with Byron in Venice in the same year. He met Byron at Pisa again in 1822, after Byron’s facetious poem on his imprisonment in Newgate, My Boy Hobby-O, had almost terminated their friendship. As a member of the London Greek Committee he encouraged Byron on his last journey in 1823; and had he insisted, Byron’s memoirs would almost certainly not have been destroyed in 1824.

Hobhouse’s diary was published in heavily truncated and censored form, as part of Recollections of a Long Life, edited by his daughter, Lady Dorchester, in six volumes between 1909 and 1911. He had used it as the basis for three previous publications: A Journey through Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the years 1809 and 1810 (1813), Travels in Albania and other Provinces of Turkey in 1809 and 1810 (1855) and Italy: Remarks made in several visits from the year 1816 to 1854 (1859).

John Cam Hobhouse’s diary is one of the two major texts written about Byron by his contemporaries which has still to see the full light of day – though it is about much more than Byron, for Hobhouse became, as he cast off his Byronic shackles, a significant political figure in his own right. The sections on his two Napoleonic French excursions – on both of which he went without Byron – are worth books in themselves. His weeks in Newgate, just before he was elected MP for Westminster, will be included. However, the extent to which he played Sancho to Byron’s Quixote – Pylades to Byron’s Orestes – Hal to Byron’s Falstaff – Horatio to Byron’s Hamlet – Celia to Byron’s Rosalind – cannot be exaggerated, and will have justice done to it.