'Princess Charlotte wrote of reading as a "great passion"; in a poignant attempt to
construct bourgeois domestic intimacy in the dysfunctional household of the
divorced Prince Regent she discussed and exchanged books with her friend
Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, including memoirs and recent history, Byron's poems,
and novels including Gothic fiction and works by Anne Plumptre and Jane Austen.
(The perceptive Charlotte especially enjoyed "Sense and Sensibility" because she
discerned in herself "the same imprudence" as Marianne's).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Charlotte Print: Book
'Extract from Byron's Monody on the death of Sheridan' [transcript of text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
'Sonnet on Chillon' [transcript of text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
'Shakespeare incited his appetitie for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'Byron had intoxicated him "with the freedom of his style of writing, with the fervour or passionateness of his feelings and with the dark and terrible pictures which he seemed to take pleasure in painting". The general effect of reading Milton, Hobbes, Locke and Newton had been "to make me resolve to be free. I saw that it was impossible for the soul of man to answer the end for which it was created, while tramelled by human authority, or fettered with human creeds. I saw that if I was to do justice to truth, to God, or to my own soul, I must break loose from all creeds and laws of men's devising, and live in full and unrestricted liberty..."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'De Quincey ... in a letter to the Wordsworths of 27 May 1809 said that he had read ... [Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers] "some weeks - or perhaps months - ago: but it is so deplorably dull and silly that I never thought of mentioning it before.'''
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas De Quincey Print: Book
'On 17-18 May 1812 W[ordsworth] wrote to M[ary] W[ordsworth]: "Yesterday I dined alone with Lady B. - and we read Lord Byron's new poem whch is not destitute of merit; though ill-planned, and often unpleasing in the sentiments, and almost always perplexed in the construction."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'On 17-18 May 1812 W[ordsworth] wrote to M[ary] W[ordsworth]: "Yesterday I dined
alone with Lady B. - and we read Lord Byron's new poem whch is not destitute of
merit; though ill-planned, and often unpleasing in the sentiments, and almost always
perplexed in the construction."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Beaumont Print: Book
'Writing to D[orothy] W[ordsworth] on 19 Aug. 1814, W[ordsworth] describes an incident in a Perth bookshop: "I stepped yesterday evening into a Bookseller's shop with a sneaking hope that I might hear something about the Excursion ... on the contrary, inquiry of the Bookseller what a poetical parcel he was then opening consisted of, he said that it was a new Poem, called Lara ... supposed to be written by Lord Byron ... I took the book in my hand, and saw Jacqueline in the same column with Lara ... "'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
Byron to William J. Bankes, on having received 'two Critical opinions, from Edinburgh' (of Lord Woodhouselee and Henry Mackenzie) in praise of his Poems on Various Occasions: 'I am not personally acquainted with either of these Gentlemen ... their praise is voluntary, and transmitted through the Medium, of a Friend, at whose house, they read the productions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee Print: Book
Byron to William J. Bankes, on having received 'two Critical opinions, from Edinburgh' (of Lord Woodhouselee and Henry Mackenzie) in praise of his Poems on Various Occasions: 'I am not personally acquainted with either of these Gentlemen ... their praise is voluntary, and transmitted through the Medium, of a Friend, at whose house, they read the productions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Mackenzie Print: Book
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814): 'I never in my life read a composition [of his own], save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible thing to do too frequently ... '
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 December 1813, on pleasure at learning of his works' popularity in the USA: "The greatest pleasure I ever derived, of this kind, was from an extract, in Cooke the actor's life, from his journal, saying that in the reading-room of Albany, near Washington, he perused English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Frederick Cooke Print: Book
In extract from journal of George Frederick Cooke in W. Dunlap, Memoirs of George Frederick Cooke: "Read English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, by Lord Byron. It is well written, His Lordship is rather severe ... on Walter Scott ... "
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Frederick Cooke Print: Book
Byron to Thomas Moore, 15 September 1814:
'I believe I told you of Larry and Jacquy [ie Lara and Jacqueline, poems by Byron and Samuel Rogers respectively, published together]. A friend of mine was reading -- or at least a friend of his was reading -- said Larry and Jacquy in a Brighton coach. A passenger took up the book and queried as to the author. The proprietor said "there were two" -- to which the answer of the unknown was, "Ay, ay, a joint concern, I suppose, summot like Sternhold and Hopkins [publishers in 1547 of versified Psalms, which went into many editions]."
'Is not this excellent?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Murray had written to Byron on September 12 [1816] that he had carried the manuscript of the third canto of Childe Harold to [William] Gifford [his literary advisor]... Although Gifford was suffering from jaundice, he sat up until he had finished the whole of it ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Thomas Moore, 25 March 1817, on Alpine travels in 1816: 'I kept a journal of the whole for my sister Augusta, which she copied and let Murray see.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Leigh Manuscript: Codex
Byron to Thomas Moore, 25 March 1817, on Alpine travels in 1816: 'I kept a journal of the whole for my sister Augusta, which she copied and let Murray see.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Manuscript: Codex
Byron to John Murray, 9 April 1817: 'I will tell you something about [The Prisoner of] Chillon. -- A Mr. De Luc ninety years old -- a Swiss -- had it read to him & is pleased with it -- so my Sister writes. -- He said that he was with Rousseau at Chillon -- & that the description is perfectly correct ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Andre de Luc Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 15 September 1817, on what he perceives to be inferiority of contemporary authors to Pope: 'I am the more confirmed in this - by having lately gone over some of our Classics - particularly Pope ... I took Moore's poems & my own & some others - & went over them side by side with Pope's - and I was really astonished ... and mortified - at the ineffable distance in point of sense - harmony - effect - & even Imagination Passion - & Invention - between the little Queen Anne's Man - & us of the lower Empire ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] 'Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 6 July 1821: 'At the particular request of the Countess G[uiccioli] I have promised not to continue Don Juan ... She had read the two first [cantos] in the French translation -- & never ceased beseeching me to write no more of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Countess Teresa Guiccioli Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Byron to John Murray, 24 November 1821, regarding his MS Memoirs: 'Is there anything in the M.S.S. that could be personally obnoxious to himself [John Cam Hobhouse]? ... Mr. Kinnaird & others had read them at Paris and noticed none such.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Kinnaird Manuscript: Unknown
Leslie A. Marchand notes regarding 1812 letter in which Byron mentions sending a book (possibly Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) to Lady Caroline Lamb 'which [she] is not to look at till Mr. Lamb has first gone through it for there is one passage which I have doubts whether it would be proper for ladies to see': '... according to Caroline she had read a copy [of Childe Harold], loaned by [Samuel] Rogers, before she met Byron.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
At 3 1/4 down the old bank to the library. Miss Maria Browne there. Came up to me to say her sister had so bad a cold [...] she could not possibly stir out today [...] I walked slowly up Royston Rd [...] went up, found Miss Browne, not perhaps quite so unwell as I expected, sitting on the sopha reading the last canto of Childe Harold. Would not let her send for her mother till I had sat 40 minutes tete-a-tete with herself.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Browne Print: Book
'finished my morning's work a few minutes before 2. Made an extract or 2 from Lord Byron's Childe Harold + the lyrics at the end of the book in readiness to take it back. Set off down the old bank a little before 4. Staid at the library above an hour looking out a couple of books with proper prints for the children to copy at Pye Nest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore Print: Book
'Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... liked to get away from political anxieties by devouring what he called "shilling shockers": adventure stories, American westerns, and thrillers, though he would occasionally leaven the mixture by rereading Dickens and what he considered the erotic passages of Byron, Milton and Burns. He did latch on to some best-sellers, such as Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913), which he read "over and over again" ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lloyd George Print: Book
Letter H. 39 - (12/10/1856) - "I don't know when I read a poem, since a boy I first read "The Assyrian came down" - which has given me such intense pleasure as the "Burden of Nineveh" in No. 8 of Oxford & Cambridge."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'I do not like Lord Byron's English Bards and Scotch reviewers, though, as my father says, the lines are very strong and worthy of Pope and the Dunciad! But I was so much prejudiced against the whole by the first lines I opened upon about the 'paralytic muse' of the man who had been his guardian and is his relation and to whom he had dedicated his first poems, that I could not relish his wit. He may have great talents, but I am sure he has neither a great not good mind; and I feel dislike and disgust for his Lordship.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
?But Lord Byron ? he must write with great ease and rapidity.?
?That I don?t know. I could never finish the perusal of any of his long poems. There is something in them excessively at variance with my notions of poetry. He is too fond of the obsolete? It is a sort of a mixed mode, neither old nor new, but incessantly hovering between both.?
?What do you think of Childe Harold??
?I do not know what to think of it; nor can I give you definitely my reasons for disliking his poems generally.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richarson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
"... by August [1840] ... [Anne Jemima Clough admits in journal] doing 'one bad thing' (which turns out to be reading Byron's 'The Corsair') ..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Jemima Clough Print: Book
" ... Elizabeth Sewell's consumption of 'modern' works in the late 1820s and 1830s, she records [in her autobiography], specifically mentioning Scott and Byron, led to worry and 'hysteria' based on the feeling that it would be pleasant to have someone caring for her. She had not yet learnt, she claims, the joy that comes through caring for others."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
'Lancashire millworker Ben Brierley read penny fairy tales and horror stories as a boy, but they did not contribute to his work as a dialect poet: "I must confess that my soul did not feel much lifted by the only class of reading then within my reach. It was not until I joined the companionship of Burns and Byron that I felt 'the god within me'".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ben Brierley Print: Book
'Moore's Lallah Rookh & Byron's Childe Harold canto fourth formed an odd mixture with these speculations. It was foolish, you may think, to exchange the truths of philosophy, for the airy nothings of these sweet singers: but I could not help it. Do not fear that I will spend some time in criticising the tulip-cheek.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'There were few books at home when [Harry Burton] was a boy, but one of them was "Don Juan". He read it before he was eleven - through a prepubescent frame, of course. "I saw nothing in it but comic adventures, sunny shores, storms, Arabian interiors and words, words, words. Many of these words I did not understand, but I did not therefore jump to the conclusion that they were indecent. All of them - or nearly all - jogged happily through my unreceptive brain leaving vaguely pleasing sensations in their wake.... Genius speaks to all hearts and to all ages".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Burton Print: Book
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
'John Smith, Bob Hankinson, and I, went over the "Hebrew Melodies" together'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'Anne Grant loved books, but felt guilty about literary pleasure: she enjoyed Byron's poems but worried about their morality, and was "fully convinced of the bad tendency" of the works of Peter Pindar because of "the amusement I derive from them".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'In the [italics]Autobiography[end italics] he tells us of the impact of Byron on him and his friend Dave: "His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom... While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing... Dave would lean his figure... against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merrymaking"... His friend soon tired of this Byronic posing, but Davies marks the occasion as the first time he was really attracted to poetry with enjoyment and serious purpose. He went on to read Shelley, Marlowe's plays, and some further Shakespeare. Wordsworth failed to attract him, though he later studied him very diligently'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies Print: Book
'In the [italics]Autobiography[end italics] he tells us of the impact of Byron on him and his friend Dave: "His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom... While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing... Dave would lean his figure... against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merrymaking"... His friend soon tired of this Byronic posing, but Davies marks the occasion as the first time he was really attracted to poetry with enjoyment and serious purpose. He went on to read Shelley, Marlowe's plays, and some further Shakespeare. Wordsworth failed to attract him, though he later studied him very diligently'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: [Dave, friend of W.H. Davies] anon Print: Book
Leon Edel quotes John Buchan, in "Memory Hold-the-Door" (1940), pp.151-52:
'an aunt of my wife's [Lady Lovelace], who was the widow of Byron's grandson, asked Henry James and myself to examine her archives in order to reach some conclusion on the merits of the quarrel between Byron and his wife [...] during a summer week-end, Henry James and I waded through masses of ancient indecency, and duly wrote an opinion [signed by Buchan on 4 April 1910 and by James on 7 April]. The things nearly made me sick, but my colleague never turned a hair.'
Edel adds that 'Byron's intimate letters to Lady Melbourne [copied by Lord Lovelace] [...] written during the three years preceding [his] marriage, were the ones read by James and Buchan.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James and John Buchan Manuscript: Letter
'From that time [summer 1840] to the present [1845] I have not read much. I have, however, looked through Lord Byron's works, the "Memoirs of Mr William Hutton", and Dr Stilling's Autobiography; with some of the works of Sir Walter Scott, Dr Southey, and Miss Martineau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, journal letter to Harriet St. Leger, 27 June 1835, listing 'the books just now lying on my table, all of which I have been reading lately':
'Alfieri's "Life", by himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book, "A Tour on the Prairies", rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays, containing "Dr. Faustus". I have just finished Hayward's Translation of Goethe's "Faust", and wanted to see the old English treatment of the subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure. This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read, but if you remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say that they are still apt to be of the same heterogenous quality. But my brain is kept in a certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the desirable results of reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Henry Chorley, in Memorials of Mrs Hemans (1836): 'after having heard those beautiful stanzas addressed to his sister [composed August 1816] by Lord Byron -- which afterwards appeared in print -- read aloud twice in manuscript, she [Felicia Hemans] repeated them to us, and even wrote them down with a surprising accuracy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Manuscript: Unknown
'Childe Harold
I have read your Book & cannot refrain from telling you that I think it & all those whom I live with & whose opinions are far more worth having--think it beautiful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'"perchance my dog will whine in vain
"Till fed my stranger hands--
"But long e'er I come back again
"he'd tear me where he stands'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'"Gull" & the Bulbul and a young Galeongee are just so many baits to draw sneers--which however disposed are always better avoided--I think the Bride of Abydos full of these lesser faults but the Corsair is quite beautiful--indeed he [Byron] has a very splendid Genius--& I cannot but feel a deep & lasting anxiety that he should be himself [underlined] in all things it is all I ask--you owe his quotations from Dante and the beginning of the Bride to me--& not to Mad. De Staal--for I sent him Dante last year so that you see I was not useless even to his Genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'"Gull" & the Bulbul and a young Galeongee are just so many baits to draw sneers--which however disposed are always better avoided--I think the Bride of Abydos full of these lesser faults but the Corsair is quite beautiful--indeed he [Byron] has a very splendid Genius--& I cannot but feel a deep & lasting anxiety that he should be himself [underlined] in all things it is all I ask--you owe his quotations from Dante and the beginning of the Bride to me--& not to Mad. De Staal--for I sent him Dante last year so that you see I was not useless even to his Genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book, Unknown
'How you surprise me--write me but one word more [--] it is not true that he [Byron] sent word to you that he was very angry "Weep daughter" was cut out of the other editions--is it not true that he stood firm to what he had done & took blame wholly upon himself--this I trust is true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Unknown
'I never saw two Women more in love with you than my favourite Lady Hamilton & her sister.
They talk of you in a manner I cannot bear to hear [...] I read to them in your voice & they nearly cried & kissed me till I was suffocated all for love of you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Unknown
'I think I shall live to see the day--when some beautiful & innocent Lady Byron shall drive to your door [...] I really believe that when that day comes, I shall buy a pistol at Mantons & stand before the Giaour [Lord Byron] & his legal wife & shoot myself'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
'Many a dull thing goes down by a puff--& all in all is fame Witness the Hebrew Melodies which I have though you did not send them me--they are not worthy of him--trust one who can appreciate his Genius they are very common place lowly performances'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'"She walks in beauty like the night," for example--if Mr. Twiss had written it how we should have laughed! Now we can only weep to see how little just judgement there is on earth, for I make no doubt the name of Byron will give even these lines a grace. I who read his loftier lay with transport will not admire his flaws and nonsense. You will say it is only a song, yet a song should have sense'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'At a moment of such deep agony & I may add shame--when utterly disgraced judge Byron what my feelings must be at Murrays shewing me some beautiful verses of yours--I do implore you for God sake not to publish these could I have seen you one moment I would explain why--I have only time to add that however those who surround you may make you disbelieve it you will draw ruin on your own head and hers [Augusta Leigh's] if at this moment you shew these lines'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'[A]nd so you have never heard of Beppo--I think you said so at Devonshire House supper. Now Heaven fail in granting me pardon for all my offenses if it is not by himself [Byron], & in his very best wit as good as any thing Swift ever wrote a flatterer would say better. I read it having taken an Emetic for that head ache which troubled me so much the night I sat beside you & I must own it did delight me so that the Emetic faild [sic] in affecting me--now though this is not a pretty illustration of what should be felt in reading Poetry--believe me it is emphatic & expresses much more than fairer words--after all it would be kind in you to tell me if it is his'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'How very very clever I think Beppo--I am quite sure it is his [Byron's]--& still more that Mr. Frere never could have written any thing like it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'I told Murray to tell you that I read his journal with sorrow & perhaps with anger'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
'have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'She read enormously, finding time and energy we wonder how. A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though she did include some novels - Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's sensation-making "Vathek", in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, Lord Byron's "Childe Harold". "Childe Harold's" only rival in her poetic reading was "The Faerie Queene". That was a reckless undertaking for the height of the London season; she may not, like so many of us, have quite finished "The Faerie Queene".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
'she asked [Byron] to recommend her some books of modern history. At present she was reading Sismondi's "Italian Republics". And she had read "Lara". Shakespeare alone possessed the same power as Byron had there displayed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
'Early in July appeared the first part of "Don Juan". "The impression was not so disagreeable as I expected", wrote Annabella. "In the first place I am very much relieved to find that there is not anything which I can be expected to notice... I do not feel inclined to continue the perusal. It is always a task to me now to read his works, in which, through all the levity, I discern enough to awake very painful feelings".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Serial / periodical
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in 'The Giaour', the 'Fare thee well', and the 'Satire'. With the first she was highly pleased, from its efusion-of-feeling character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in 'The Giaour', the 'Fare thee well', and the 'Satire'. With the first she was highly pleased, from its efusion-of-feeling character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in 'The Giaour', the 'Fare thee well', and the 'Satire'. With the first she was highly pleased, from its efusion-of-feeling character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
'Mary read to me some passages from Ld Byron's poems. I was not before so clearly aware [of] how much of the colouring our own feelings throw upon the liveliest delineations of other minds'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title = 'Strangers by Lord Byron'; Text = 'When coldness wraps this suffering clay/ Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?/ It cannot die, it cannot stay/ But leaves its darken'd dust behind ...' [total = 4 x 8 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Untitled; Text = 'Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine/ A sad, sour, sober beverage - by time/ Is sharpen'ed from its high celestial flavour/ Down to a very homely household savour'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
'I read his own [Byron's] memoirs before Murray burnt them.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
'Dear Lord Byron?
I must thank you for yr. Poem you have sent me I [this word is illegible] not say how good I think it is [?]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Sarah Jersey Manuscript: Unknown
'I received the Books, & among them the Bride of Abydos. It is very, very beautiful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Canning Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'She was shocked by some of the hero's adventures but more often thrilled. Laura learned quite a lot by reading "Don Juan".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
'On a Gold Heart Which Was broken' 'Ill fated heart and can it be/...' [transcript changes the gender of the speaker]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'On the Destruction of Semnacherib/ By Byron'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
'Modern Greece/ From the Bride of Abydos'
'Know ye the land where the cypress & myrtle/...' [canto one, stanza one (only) of Bride of Abydos: A Turkish Tale]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'To a Lady Weeping "Weep, daughter of a royal line..."'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George or Edward Carey Print: Unknown
'From Byron' 'The Chain I Gave Was Fair to View.../'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
'Written Beneath a Picture' 'Dear object of defeated care!/...' 'R.G.C. 1835'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: 'R.G.C.' Print: Unknown
'On being asked what was the "Origin of Love"' 'The "Origin of Love! - ah why/That question cruel ask of me/...' [minor differences from the original]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward or George Carey Print: Unknown
'A Fragment' 'When to their airy hall... [printed first line 'When, to their...] 'Byron'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Friendship' 'O yes I will own we were dear to one another/...' [Oh! Yes, I will own we were dear to each other/...' - Byron's original text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Maingay [?] Print: Unknown
'Farewell' 'Farewell! If ever fondest prayer/...' [Some differences in punctuation from Byron's text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'The Tear' 'When Friendship or Love' [Epigraph from Gray, not transcribed]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Impromptu, in Reply to a Friend' 'When from the heart where sorrow sits/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'On A Cornelian Heart Which Was Broken' [transcript entire poem]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'On A Cornelian Heart Which Was Broken' [transcript entire poem]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'From the Portuguese' 'In moments to delight devoted/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'On Parting' 'The kiss, dear maid! Thy lip has left, /...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'On being asked what was the "Origin of Love"' 'The "Origin of Love!" - Ah Why That Cruel question ask of Me.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'Sonnet on Chillon "Eternal spirit of the Chainless Mind!, ..."'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Why should my anxious heart repine, ... Byron-1807' [three stanzas first published in Moore's 'Life', 1830]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'It is the voice of the years that are gone! They roll before me with all their deeds. Ossian! Newstead! Fast falling, once resplendent dome!/...' 'Elegy on Newstead Abbey, Early Poems 1803'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'If that high World If that high World which has beyond...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'On leaving Newstead Abbey ... >From Newstead Sept 9th 1830'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'I would I were a careless child, ...' 'Early Poems'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Oh! Snatched away in Beauty's bloom...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Extract from Byron's Monody on the Death of Sheridan
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Voice of the Second Spirit' 'Mont Blanc is the Monarch of mountains, ...' 'Manfred'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Sun of the Sleepless' 'Sun of the Sleepless! Melancholy Star!...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'When coldness wraps this suffering clay ... Hebrew Melodies'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean - roll! ... And laid my hand upon thy mane - as I do here. 4th canto'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Sometime about the twenty first year of my age I perceived the great advantage possessed by those who received a classical education. I had read Byron's "Childe Harold" and the passage "Alas for Tully's voice" and Virgil's Lay And Troy's pictured page &c inspired me with a desire to dive deeper into Latin Literature.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
'for each there had been no poet later than Byron...'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip and Emily Gosse Print: Book
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
'Do not be angry with me for beginning another Letter to you. I have read the Corsair, mended my petticoat, & have nothing else to do.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Coming upon a copy of "Don Quixote" in a warder's house, he thought it was "the most wonderful book [he] had ever seen". When he refused to give it up, the warder said he might keep it... "Don Quixote" awakened in Arthur a "passion for reading", and before long, he had read Scott, then Byron, who, he had been told was" a very, very great poet, and a very, very wicked man, an atheist, a writer whom it was dangerous to read".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
'During Mr Montgomery's stay he read books from my library, and on his returning Byron's Doge of Venice.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Montgomery Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at home in the Isle of Wight, after leaving her Bath boarding school in 1830:
'I used to study by myself, for I knew that I was woefully ignorant. Such books as Russell's "History of Modern Europe" and Robertson's "Charles the Fifth", I read, and also Watts on the "Improvement of the Mind", and I plodded through an Italian history of the Venetian Doges, lent me by an intimate and valued friend of my father, Mr. Turnbull [...] I taught myself besides to read Spanish -- for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of
the books which I knew so well by name. The elements of botany on the Linnean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, beside the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too was a great favourite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
'What Books have you been perusing - and how did you like Sha[ke]spea[re]? - Since I saw you I have toil'd thro' many a thick octa[vo] - many of them to little purpose. Byron's and Scott's "Poems" I have read and must admire - tho' you recollect, we used to give Campbell a de[cided] preference - and I still think, with justice. Have you ever seen Hoole's "Tas[so?]" I have among many others read, it, "Leonidas", "The Epigoniad", "Oberon", "Savage[e's] Poems" &.c. Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs" and "Waverl[e]y" have been the principal of my Novels - With regard to "Waverl[e]y" I cannot help remarking t[hat] in my opinion it is the best novel that has been published these thirty years. The characters of Ebenezer Cru[i]ckshank[s] mine host of the garter, the Reverend Mr. Gowk - thrapple and Squire Bradwardian display a Cervantic vein of humour which has seldom been surpassed - whilst the descriptions of the gloomy caverns of the Highlands, and the delineations of the apathic Callum Beg and enterprising Vich Ian Vohr show a richness of [italics]Scottean[end italics] colouring which few have equalled. Give me your opinion of it if you have read it; - and if not - endeavour by all means to procure it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
[italics] 'S. remains at home. reads Livy - [scored out] p.532 2d vol. [end scored out] Maie reads very little of Gibbon - We read and are delighted with Lara - the finest of Lord B's poems. S. reads Lara aloud in the evening. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley Print: Book
[italics] 'S. remains at home. reads Livy - [scored out] p.532 2d vol. [end scored out] Maie reads very little of Gibbon - We read and are delighted with Lara - the finest of Lord B's poems. S. reads Lara aloud in the evening. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 3rd Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I am melancholy with reading the 3rd Canto of Childe Harold. Do you not remember, Shelley when you first read it to me? One evening after returning from Diodati. It was in our little room at Chapuis - the lake was before us and the mighty Jura. That time is past and this will also pass when I may weep to read this words and again moralize on the flight of time. Dear Lake! I shall ever love thee. How a powerful mind can sanctify past scenes and recollections - His is a powerful mind. one that fills me with melancholy yet mixed with pleasure as is always the case when intellectual energy is displayed. I think of our excursions on the lake. how we saw him when he came down to us or welcomed our arrival with a goodhumoured smile - How very vividly does each verse of his poem recall some scene of this kind to my memory - This time will soon also be a recollection - We may see him again & again - enjoy his society but the time will also arrive when that which is now an anticipation will be only in the memory - death will at length come and in the last moment all will be a dream.
Am I not very melancholy? Godwin is out and I shall finish the canto although I fear it will not raise my spirits.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Sterne & the 2nd Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read the Giaur[sic] & the Corsair'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read the Giaur[sic] & the Corsair'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Lara'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Monday Jany. 3rd. [...] Read Don Juan. Read the Life of Plutarch.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Prisoner of Chillon &c. to Mrs G'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. calls on Lord B - He [presumably Shelley] reads the 4th Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 4th Canto'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Transcribe Mazeppa'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Finish transcribing Mazeppa - Copy the ode'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Read "Women" of Mathuerin [for Maturin] - the Fudge Family - Beppo &c. S. begins the Republic of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Sleep at Bologna - S. reads 4th Canto aloud to me - read Montaigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads D.[on] Juan aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Don Juan'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - work - Read Mazeppa - S. reads Sophocles - & St Mathew [sic] aloud to me - Translate S.[pinoza]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Don Juan'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's reading list for 1820, with texts also read by Percy Shelley marked with an x. Only texts not mentioned in the journal are given separate entries based on this list]
'M. (& (S with an x) - 1820
The remainder of Livy.
x The Bible until the end of Ezekhiel
x Don Juan
x Travels Before the Flood
La Nouvelle Heloise
The Fable of the Bees
Paine's Works
Utopia
x Voltaire's Memoires
x The Aenied [sic] And Georgics
Bridone's Travels
Robinson Crusoe
Sandford & Merton
x Astronomy in the Encyclopaedia
Vindication of the Rights of women
x Boswell's life of Johnson
Paradise regained & lost
Mary - Letters from Norway & Posthumus [sic] Works
Ivanhoe - Tales of my Landlord
Fleetwood - Caleb Williams
x Ricciardetto.
x Mrs Macauly's [sic] Hist. of Engd
x Lucretius
The 3 first orations of Cicero
Muratori Anti chita [sic] d'Italia
Travels & Rebellion in Ireland
Tegrino's life of Castruccio
x Boccacio [sic] - Decamerone
x Keats' poems
x armata
Corinne
The first book of Homer. Oedippus [sic] Tyrannus
A Little Spanish & much Italian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read Cain'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read the Vision of Judgement'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'S. reads L.[ord] B.[yron]'s - Heaven and Earth in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'dine with Jane - Read Albe's tragedy to her'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'read Sardanapalus'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
'Read the Two Foscari'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
'The elements of botany on the Linnaean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, besides the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too, was a great favourite'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'Try, by way of change, Byron?s "Mazeppa", you will be astonished. It is grand and no mistake, and one sees through it a fire, and a passion, and a rapid intuition of genius, that makes one rather sorry for one?s own generation of better writers and ? I don?t know what to say; I was going to say ?smaller men?; but that?s not right; read it and you will feel what I cannot express. Don't be put out by the beginning; persevere; and you will find yourself thrilled before you are at an end with it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Byron has sent us a new poem the Age of Bronze: it is short, and pithy - but not at all poetical. Byron may still easily fail to be a great man. You shall see his Bronze (a poetical squib) when you arrive; and another Liberal which is on the way.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'I am sorry to mention that [Lord Byron's] last poem upon "The Decadence of Bonaparte", is worthy neither his pen nor his muse'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales
'Your descriptions of your travels do indeed set my feet moving, and my heart longing to see all you have seen; and this desire has been increased by reading the "Corsair" lately; it is indeed exquisite, the most perfect, I think, of all Byron's performances. What a divine picture of death is that of the description of Gulnare!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Ferrier Print: Book
'As you like sometimes high treason, I send you a copy of the verses written by Lord Byron on the discovery of the bodies of Charles the First and Henry the Eighth: you may communicate it to any of your friends you please'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline, Princess of Wales Manuscript: Unknown
'if you have no [italics] odd things [end italics] lying about you which I daresay you do not lack there are many pieces among those you published in your youth which are I deem not much known and which I think extremely beautifull if you would deign to favour us with something of either the one class or the other you can hardly conceive how much it would oblige [italics] me [end italics] in particular and turn as it were every letter of our little repository into gold'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
'I have had such a pleasant morning perusing Lara to day that I cannot risist [sic] the impulse of writing to you and telling you so. The last Canto of it is much the best thing you ever wrote - there are many pictures in it which the heart of man can scarcely brook. It is besides more satisfactorily and better wind up [sic] than any of your former tales and the images rather more perceptible. You are constantly improving in this Your figures from the very first were strong without parallel but in every new touch of your pencil they are better and better relieved. In the first Canto there is haply too much painting of the same and too close on that so much dwelt on in the Corsair; Yet still as it excels the rest in harmony of numbers I am disposed to give it the preference to any of them.
[Hogg then advises Byron not to attempt writing drama]
I have been extremely puzzled to find out who Sir Ezzelin is sometimes I have judged him to be some sea captain at others Medora's uncle or parent from whom the Corsair had stole her but I have at last pleased myself by concluding that Lord Byron does not know himself - what a wretched poet Mr Rogers is. You are truly very hardly set for great original poets in England at present when such as he must be extolled. I could not help smiling at his Jacqueline'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I have had such a pleasant morning perusing Lara to day that I cannot risist [sic] the impulse of writing to you and telling you so. The last Canto of it is much the best thing you ever wrote - there are many pictures in it which the heart of man can scarcely brook. It is besides more satisfactorily and better wind up [sic] than any of your former tales and the images rather more perceptible. You are constantly improving in this Your figures from the very first were strong without parallel but in every new touch of your pencil they are better and better relieved. In the first Canto there is haply too much painting of the same and too close on that so much dwelt on in the Corsair; Yet still as it excels the rest in harmony of numbers I am disposed to give it the preference to any of them
[Hogg then advises Byron not to attempt writing drama]
I have been extremely puzzled to find out who Sir Ezzelin is sometimes I have judged him to be some sea captain at others Medora's uncle or parent from whom the Corsair had stole her but I have at last pleased myself by concludoing thatg Lord Byron does not know himself - what a wretched poet Mr Rogers is You are truly very hardly set for great original poets in England at present when such as he must be extolled. I could not help smiling at his Jacqueline'.'I have had such a pleasant morning perusing Lara to day that I cannot risist [sic] the impulse of writing to you and telling you so. The last Canto of it is much the best thing you ever wrote - there are many pictures in it which the heart of man can scarcely brook. It is besides more satisfactorily and better wind up [sic] than any of your former tales and the images rather more perceptible. You are constantly improving in this Your figures from the very first were strong without parallel but in every new touch of your pencil they are better and better relieved. In the first Canto there is haply too much painting of the same and too close on that so much dwelt on in the Corsair; Yet still as it excels the rest in harmony of numbers I am disposed to give it the preference to any of them.
[Hogg then advises Byron not to attempt writing drama]
I have been extremely puzzled to find out who Sir Ezzelin is sometimes I have judged him to be some sea captain at others Medora's uncle or parent from whom the Corsair had stole her but I have at last pleased myself by concluding that Lord Byron does not know himself - what a wretched poet Mr Rogers is. You are truly very hardly set for great original poets in England at present when such as he must be extolled. I could not help smiling at his Jacqueline'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'The "Melodies" bear a few striking marks of the master's hand but there are some of them feeble and I think they must be Lady B's. He is not equal to Moore for [italics] melodies [end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'After an absence of 9 months in Yarrow I returned here the night before last when for the first time I found a copy of your two last poems kindly sent to me by Murray, the perusal of which have so much renewed my love and admiration of you as a poet that I can no longer resist the inclination of once more writing to you'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'After an absence of 9 months in Yarrow I returned here the night before last when for the first time I found a copy of your two last poems kindly sent to me by Murray, the perusal of which have so much renewed my love and admiration of you as a poet that I can no longer resist the inclination of once more writing to you'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I am highly dilighted [sic] with your two last little poems. They breathe a vein of poetry which you never once touched before and there is something in "The Siege of Corinth" at least which convinces me that you have loved my own stile of poetry better than you ever acknowledged to me. Some of the people here complain of the inadequacy of the tales to the poetry I am perfectly mad at them and Mr Jeffery [sic] among the rest for such an insinuation. I look upon them both as descriptive poems descriptive of some of the finest and boldest scenes of nature and of the most powerful emotions of the human heart. Perdition to the scanty discernment that would read such poems as they would do a novel for the sake of the plot to the disgrace of the age however be it spoken in the light romantic narrative which our mutual friend Scott has made popular this is the predominant ingredient expected and to a certainty the reviewers will harp upon the shortcoming of it in your poems as a fault'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I have had a great treat this morning in perusing L. Byron's 3d Canto - Considered as a continuation of Child-Harold [sic] it has some incongruities and perhaps too much egoism still it is a powerful and energetic work and superior to every long poem of my noble friend's - I have had only time to read two articles of the Review which I was in a great hurry to do because I knew the authors of both and was informed of their being in Giffords hand before they were put to press, but I hope all the other articles are better'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
'I have got the fourth canto to day - It is a glorious morsel!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I have done all my [italics] composition [end italics] of Ld B -, & done Crabbe outright since you left & got up Dryden & Pope - so now I'm all clear & straight before me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'I went yesterday to Montreux and then changed and went in a funny funicular to a place called Gstaadt where we arrived at 7.30. I read Byron all the time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Unknown
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Unknown
'His [Byron's] "Farewell" is miserable poetry, and the allusions to the intimacy of marriage are not only ungentlemanly, but unmanly. "The Domestick Sketch" is powerfully written. I have seen in the reports on mendicity that there are persons who teach the arts of abuse - His Lordship seems to have studied in this school, with great success'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Lovell Edgeworth Print: Unknown, either in newspaper or version circulated in society
'His [Byron's] "Farewell" is miserable poetry, and the allusions to the intimacy of marriage are not only ungentlemanly, but unmanly. "The Domestick Sketch" is powerfully written. I have seen in the reports on mendicity that there are persons who teach the arts of abuse - His Lordship seems to have studied in this school, with great success'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Lovell Edgeworth Print: Unknown, either in newspaper or version circulated in society
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Book, Unknown
Lord Dufferin to Alfred Tennyson [1858]:
'For the first 20 years of my life I not only did not care for poetry, but to the despair of my friends absolutely disliked it, at least so much of it as until that time had fallen in my way. In vain my mother read to me Dryden, Pope, Byron, Young, Cowper and all the standard classics of the day, each seemed to me as distasteful as I had from early infancy found Virgil, and I shall never forget her dismay when at a literary dinner I was cross-examined as to my tastes, and blushingly confessed before an Olympus of poets that I rather disliked poetry than otherwise.
'Soon afterwards I fell in with a volume of yours, and suddenly felt such a sensation of delight as I never experienced before. A new world seemed to open to me, and from that day, by a constant study of your works, I gradually worked my way to a gradual appreciation of what is good in all kinds of authors.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Selina Sheridan Blackwood Print: Book
'While Darvall was with us this evening, Harry was anxious to show off his reading & so essayed a Piece. He was however so affected by mumps & Stammering, that his heart failed him & he declined to proceed. To please his mamma I read a dialogue with him. This he managed very well & so we read another then Harry was wound up & would have gone on forever, had I not let him gently down. I continued the entertainment by reading "The Execution of Montrose" & was by particular desire reading Byron's "Battle of Waterloo" when my sweet voice was closed by the arrival of Mr Hadley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Did not go out but read a little Byron & then played Bezique with Polly till it was bed time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'I read a little Byron for my own amusement then a number of Aesop's Fables for the amusement of the youngsters. The evening seemed quite short in consequence of the employment & I was still busy reading when Polly & Sissy got back'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'I staid in and read Byron'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'She [Anne Isabella Milbanke] read enormously [...] A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though it did include some novels -- Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's [sic] sensation-making Vathek, in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, "Lord Byron's Childe Harold." Childe Harold's only rival in her poetic reading was The Faerie Queene.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'To Caroline Lamb, Queen of the Drawing-Rooms, a very early copy of Childe Harold was lent by Samuel Rogers [...] Instantly Rogers was summoned to Melbourne House, where the William Lambs were then living.
'"I must see him -- I am dying to see him!"
'"He has a club-foot," said Rogers, "and he bites his nails."
'"If he is as ugly as Aesop, I must see him!"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'On March 15 [1812] [...] [Anne Isabella Milbanke] dined at Lady Melbourne's [...] [William Lamb] may have been genuinely tired of the principal topic as recorded in Annabella's journal — Childe Harold, poem and poet, about both of whom his wife [Lady Caroline Lamb] had lost her head [...]
Annabella could not join in that discussion, for she had not read Childe Harold. And she let another week go by before she did read it [...] on the following Sunday she surrendered to the spirit of the season, and began. Two days later she had finished the two cantos of which it then consisted; in her diary for March 24, she set down her opinion:
'"It contains many stanzas in the best style of poetry. He is rather too much of a mannerist, that is, he wants variety in the turns of his expression. He excels most in the delineations of deep feeling, and in reflections relative to human nature." [...]
Annabella met him the day after that entry in her diary.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'Annabella had [...] written to her aunt [Lady Melbourne; during autumn 1813], after having read the enlarged edition of the Giaour. "The description of Love almost makes [italics]me[end italics] in love ... I consider his [Byron's] acquaintance so desirable that I would incur the risk of being called a Flirt for the sake of enjoying it."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
Anne Isabella Milbanke to Lord Byron (1814):
'Your ode to Buonaparte was read in the company which I have just left. It was thought not perfectly lyrical -- of this I cannot judge, but it appeared to me like a spontaenous effusion.... I was amazed indeed when his "magic of the mind" melted into air. I rejoice in the hope of peace, yet could not join in the triumphant exultation over his fall -- a very serious, if not melancholy contemplation'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke
'At present [August 1814] she [Anne Isabella Milbanke] was reading Sismondi's Italian Republics. And she had read Lara.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'[John] Murray [Byron's publisher] sent an advance-copy of the new Harold. She [Lady Byron] read the imprecation, supposed to be spoken in the Colosseum:
'"... Let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain -- shall [italics]they[end italics] not mourn?"
'-- with the two lines which prophesied his immortality of personal rather than poetic fame:
'"But I have that within me that shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire."
'She feigned indifference at first. "The passage was probably intended to make a great impression on [italics]me[end italics]. Whilst I am so free from disordered brains, this will at least be postponed." It was not long postponed. A day or two later she was "well, but very [italics]weak[end italics] ... The new canto is beautiful indeed"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
'Early in July [1819] appeared the first part of Don Juan. "The impression was not so disagreeable as I expected, wrote Annabella [Anne Isabella, Byron's estranged wife].
'"In the first place I am very much relieved to find that there is not anything which I can be expected to notice [...] I do not think that my sins are in the pharisaical or pedantic line, and I am very sure that he does not think they are, but avails himself of the prejudices which some may entertain against me, to give a plausible colouring to his accusations. I must however confess that the quizzing in one or two passages was so good as to make me smile at myself -- therefore others are quite welcome to laugh.... I do not feel inclined to continue the perusal. It is always a task to me now to read his works, in which, through all the levity, I discern enough to awaken very painful feelings."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
'Moore had owned that the Memoirs [of Byron] were of "such a low pot-house description" that [John Murray] could not have published them'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Manuscript: Unknown
'There were conflicting voices among those who had read the MS. [of Byron's Memoirs]. Lord John Russell and Lord Holland said there were at most four or five indelicate pages [...] Lord Rancliffe told [John Cam] Hobhouse that "the flames were the fit place for it," and that no decent person could regret the destruction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord John Russell Manuscript: Unknown
'There were conflicting voices among those who had read the MS. [of Byron's Memoirs]. Lord John Russell and Lord Holland said there were at most four or five indelicate pages [...] Lord Rancliffe told [John Cam] Hobhouse that "the flames were the fit place for it," and that no decent person could regret the destruction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Holland Manuscript: Unknown
'There were conflicting voices among those who had read the MS. [of Byron's Memoirs]. Lord John Russell and Lord Holland said there were at most four or five indelicate pages [...] Lord Rancliffe told [John Cam] Hobhouse that "the flames were the fit place for it," and that no decent person could regret the destruction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Rancliffe Manuscript: Unknown
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary [of Lady Byron's]: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in The Giaour, the Fare thee well, and the Satire. With the first she was highly pleased, from its [italics]effusion-of-feeling[end italics] character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person." This disproves once for all the legend invented by Teresa Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] that Ada never heard of her father's poetry until a year before she died in 1852!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary [of Lady Byron's]: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in The Giaour, the Fare thee well, and the Satire. With the first she was highly pleased, from its [italics]effusion-of-feeling[end italics] character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person." This disproves once for all the legend the legend invented by Teresa Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] that Ada never heard of her father's poetry until a year before she died in 1852!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary [of Lady Byron's]: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in The Giaour, the Fare thee well, and the Satire. With the first she was highly pleased, from its [italics]effusion-of-feeling[end italics] character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person." This disproves once for all the legend the legend invented by Teresa Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] that Ada never heard of her father's poetry until a year before she died in 1852!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 22 July 1819:
'I think parts of "Don Juan" more beautiful than anything he has written, some wit and a great
deal of bad taste.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 1 January 1822:
'I think "Cain" most wicked, but not without feeling or passion. Parts of it are magnificent, and the effect of Granville [husband] reading it out loud to me was that I roared [i.e. wept] till I could neither hear nor see. The scene, too, in "Sardanapalus" where Myrrha says "Oh, frown not on me," and the speech, "Why do I love this man?" I think beautiful and affecting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Granville Leveson Gower Print: Book
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 1 January 1822:
'I think "Cain" most wicked, but not without feeling or passion. Parts of it are magnificent, and the effect of Granville [husband] reading it out loud to me was that I roared [i.e. wept] till I could neither hear nor see. The scene, too, in "Sardanapalus" where Myrrha says "Oh, frown not on me," and the speech, "Why do I love this man?" I think beautiful and affecting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
From the Commonplace Book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“On a Cornelian Heart that was broken" - Lord Byron', beginning 'Ill-fated Heart! and can it be,/ That thou should'st thus be rent in twain?'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace Book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"To my Daughter" - Lord Byron'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Sunday, 20 November 1825 (first entry):
'I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular [journal] [...] I have bethought me on
seeing lately some volumes of Byron's notes that he probably had hit upon the right way of
keeping such a memorandum-book by throwing aside all pretence to regularity and order and
marking down events just as they occurred to recollection. I will try this plan'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Unknown
From the Commonplace Book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“Bright be the place of thy Soul” Lord Byron', beginning (first verse): 'Bright be the place of thy soul!/
No lovelier spirit than thine/
E'er burst from its mortal control,/
In the orbs of the blessed to shine.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"If that high World" - Byron', beginning 'If that high world -- which lies beyond
Our own, surviving love endears...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"To Mary" - Byron', beginning 'RACK'D by the flames of jealous rage,
By all her torments deeply curst,
Of hell-born passions far the worst,
What hope my pangs can now assuage'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of four lines lines from the "Bride of Abydos" [Byron].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Walter Scott to John Murray, 2 July 1812, with enclosed letter of appreciation to Lord Byron:
'I trouble you with a few lines to his Lordship [...] I hope he will not consider it as intrusive in a veteran author to pay my debt of gratitude for the high pleasure I have received from the perusal of "Childe Harold," which is certainly the most original poem which we have had this many a day'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron (November 1813):
'I am so very anxious to procure the best criticism upon the "Bride [of Abydos]," that I ventured last night to introduce her to the protection of Mr. Frere. He has just returned, quite delighted; he read several passages to Mr. Heber as exquisitely beautiful. He says there is a simplicity running through the whole that reminds him of the ancient ballad. [...] I asked if it was equal to the "Giaour;" he said that the "Giaour" contained perhaps a greater number of splendid passages, but that the mind carries something to [italics]rest upon[end italics] after rising from the "Bride of Abydos." It is more perfect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frere Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron (November 1813):
'I am so very anxious to procure the best criticism upon the "Bride [of Abydos]," that I ventured last night to introduce her to the protection of Mr. Frere. He has just returned, quite delighted; he read several passages to Mr. Heber as exquisitely beautiful. He says there is a simplicity running through the whole that reminds him of the ancient ballad. [...] I asked if it was equal to the "Giaour;" he said that the "Giaour" contained perhaps a greater number of splendid passages, but that the mind carries something to [italics]rest upon[end italics] after rising from the "Bride of Abydos." It is more perfect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frere Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hammond Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: ?Richard Heber Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Disraeli Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ward Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay; but I rest most upon the warm feeling it has created in Gifford's critical heart.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay; but I rest most upon the warm feeling it has created in Gifford's critical heart.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair:
'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay; but I rest most upon the warm feeling it has created in Gifford's critical heart.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hay Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara:
'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frere Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara:
'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frere Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara:
'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilmot Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara:
'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir J. Malcolm Print: Book
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara:
'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Canning Print: Book
Walter Scott to John Murray, 6 January 1814:
'I have read Lord Byron's "Bride of Abydos" with great delight, and only delay acknowledging the receipt of a copy from the author till I can send him a copy of the "Life of Swift."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
William Blackwood to John Murray, 8 November 1814:
'Since I was a little better [following illness] I have been again reading "Lara," and the delight it afforded me was exquisite. The very incongruities which a number of our small critics have been nibbling at, afforded me the highest enjoyment.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blackwood Print: Book
From recollections of John Murray junior:
'Sometimes, though not often, Lord Byron read passages from his poems to my father. His voice and manner were very impressive. His voice, in the deeper tones, bore some resemblance to that of Mrs. Siddons.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
John Murray to Lord Byron (December 1815):
'I tore open the packet you sent me, and have found in it a Pearl. It is very interesting,
pathetic, beautiful -- do you know, I would almost say moral [...] I have been most agreeably
disappointed (a word I cannot associate with the poem) at the story, which -- what you hinted
to me and wrote -- had alarmed me; and I should not have read it aloud to my wife if my eye
had not traced the delicate hand that transcribed it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Manuscript: Unknown, In hand of Anne Isabella, Lady Byron
Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray (December 1815):
'I find myself, this morning, so strangely affected by the perusal of the poem last night, that I
feel it is one which stands quite by itself [...] There is no scene, no incident, nothing so
marvellous in pathos and terror in Homer, or any bard of antiquity [comments further ] [...]
Homer has never conveyed his reader into a vast Golgotha, nor harrowed us with the vulture
flapping the back of the gorged wolf, nor the dogs: the terror, the truth, and the loneliness of
that spot will never be erased from my memory [...] I never read any poem that exceeded in
power this, to me, extraordinary production. I do not know where I am to find any which can
excite the same degree of emotion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli Manuscript: Unknown
John Murray to Byron (c. January 1816):
'I enclose Ward's note after reading the "Siege of Corinth." I lent him "Parisina" also, and he
called yesterday to express his mind at your hesitation about their merits [...] I lent Parisina
to Mr. Hay (Mr. Wilmots friend) last night, and I enclose his note. I send the proof [...] I will
send a revise of "Corinth" to-night or to-morrow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ward Manuscript: Unknown
John Murray to Byron (c. January 1816):
'I enclose Ward's note after reading the "Siege of Corinth." I lent him "Parisina" also, and he
called yesterday to express his mind at your hesitation about their merits [...] I lent Parisina
to Mr. Hay (Mr. Wilmots friend) last night, and I enclose his note. I send the proof [...] I will
send a revise of "Corinth" to-night or to-morrow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ward Manuscript: Unknown
John Murray to Byron (c. January 1816):
'I enclose Ward's note after reading the "Siege of Corinth." I lent him "Parisina" also, and he
called yesterday to express his mind at your hesitation about their merits [...] I lent Parisina
to Mr. Hay (Mr. Wilmots friend) last night, and I enclose his note. I send the proof [...] I will
send a revise of "Corinth" to-night or to-morrow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hay Manuscript: Unknown
John Murray to Byron, 4 January 1816:
'Nothing can be more interestingly framed and more interestingly told than this story
[Parisina] [...] I read it last night to D'Israeli and his family, and they were perfectly
overcome by it [comments further on text].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Manuscript: Unknown
Dr John Polidori, Byron's secretary, to John Murray, 10 July 1816:
'Since it has given you hopes of entering well into the literary world next winter, that "Childe
Harold" has got another canto [...] you will be more pleased to hear of another poem of 400
lines called "The Castle of Chillon" [sic]; the feelings of a third of three brothers in prison on
the banks of the Geneva Lake. I think it very beautiful, containing more of his tender than his
sombre poetry.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Polidori Manuscript: Unknown
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816, on William Gifford's response to Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage, Canto IV:
'He has been exceedingly ill with jaundice [...] He said he was unable to leave off last night,
and that he had sat up until he had finished every line of the canto. It had actually agitated
him into a fever [...] He had persisted this morning in finishing the volume [...] He says that
what you have heretofore published is nothing to this effort. He says also, besides its being
the most original and interesting, it is the most finished of your writings; and he has
undertaken to correct the press for you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Manuscript: Unknown
'The "Sketch from Private Life" was one of the most bitter and satirical things Byron had ever written [...] Mr. Murray showed the verses to Rogers, Frere, and Stratford Canning. In communicating the result to Byron, he said:--
'"They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it [goes on to add readers' suggestions]."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rogers Manuscript: Unknown
'The "Sketch from Private Life" was one of the most bitter and satirical things Byron had ever written [...] Mr. Murray showed the verses to Rogers, Frere, and Stratford Canning. In communicating the result to Byron, he said:--
'"They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it [goes on to add readers' suggestions]."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Hookham Frere Manuscript: Unknown
'The "Sketch from Private Life" was one of the most bitter and satirical things Byron had ever written [...] Mr. Murray showed the verses to Rogers, Frere, and Stratford Canning. In communicating the result to Byron, he said:--
'"They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it [goes on to add readers' suggestions]."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Stratford Canning Manuscript: Unknown
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816:
'Respecting the "Monody," I extract from a letter which I received this morning from Sir James Mackintosh: "I presume I have to thank you for a copy of the "Monody" on Sheridan received this morning. I wish it had been accompanied by the additional favour of mentioning the name of the writer, at which I only guess: it is difficult to read the poem without desiring to know."
'Generally speaking it is not, I think, popular, and spoken of rather for fine passages than as a whole [...] Gifford does not like it; Frere does.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir James Mackintosh
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816:
'Respecting the "Monody," I extract from a letter which I received this morning from Sir James Mackintosh: "I presume I have to thank you for a copy of the "Monody" on Sheridan received this morning. I wish it had been accompanied by the additional favour of mentioning the name of the writer, at which I only guess: it is difficult to read the poem without desiring to know."
'Generally speaking it is not, I think, popular, and spoken of rather for fine passages than as a whole [...] Gifford does not like it; Frere does.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816:
'Respecting the "Monody," I extract from a letter which I received this morning from Sir James Mackintosh: "I presume I have to thank you for a copy of the "Monody" on Sheridan received this morning. I wish it had been accompanied by the additional favour of mentioning the name of the writer, at which I only guess: it is difficult to read the poem without desiring to know."
'Generally speaking it is not, I think, popular, and spoken of rather for fine passages than as a whole [...] Gifford does not like it; Frere does.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Hookham Frere
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817:
'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ward
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817:
'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817:
'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Canning
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817:
'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Maria Graham to John Murray (March 1817):
'A thousand thanks, my dear sir, for the loan of the Journal, which I have perused with the greatest interest. A more superstitious age would certainly have believed him possessed of the [italics]art magic[end italics], so completely does he continue to force attention and sympathy wherever he pleases [comments further in praise of text and author] [...] I always forget myself when I think of our greatest genius [i.e. Byron]. Therefore I will hasten to thank you for the two dramas. The French one amuses me, the other does so for a different reason.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Graham Manuscript: Unknown
John Cam Hobhouse to John Murray, from Venice, 7 December 1817:
'Your new acquisition is a very fine finish to the three cantos already published [comments further] [...] it is possible that all other readers may agree with my simple self in liking this fourth canto better than anything Lord B. has ever written. I must confess I feel an affection for it more than ordinary, as part of it was begot, as it were, under my own eyes; for some of the stanzas owe their birth to our morning walk or evening ride at La Mara.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cam Hobhouse Manuscript: Unknown
John Murray to Byron, 16 June 1818:
'Mr. Frere is at length satisfied that you are the author of "Beppo." He had no conception that you possessed the protean talent of Shakespeare, thus to assume at will so different a character.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Hookham Frere
'Lady Caroline Lamb informed [John] Murray [Byron's publisher]: "You cannot think how clever I think 'Don Juan' is, in my heart."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
John Cam Hobhouse to John Murray, 22 October 1821, prior to publications of Byron's plays Cain, The Two Foscari, and Sardanapalus:
'If it be not presumptuous of me to say so, I should venture to assert that tragedy-writing is not Lord Byron's forte; that is to say, it will not turn out to be the best thing that he can do. According to my poor way of thinking, the "Corsair" and the Fourth Canto [of "Childe Harold"] will always bear away the palm.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cam Hobhouse Print: Book
'Mr. Hobhouse wrote that [Sardanapalus] interested him very deeply, though it might be thought fantastical and unnatural by some [goes on to quote letter from Hobhouse to Murray of 22 October 1821].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cam Hobhouse Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott to John Murray, regarding Byron's Cain:
'I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton upon his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers [...] But then they must condemn "Paradise Lost" if they have a mind to be consistent [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Sharon Turner (lawyer) to John Murray, 31 January 1822:
'Mr. Shadwell, whom I have just seen, has told me that he had read "Cain" some time ago, -- that he thinks it contains nothing but what a bookseller can be fairly justified in publishing, that it is not worse in many parts than "Paradise Regained" and in "Paradise Lost" [...] He is King's Counsel and a religious man. He thinks it can hurt no reasonable mind. He will lead the case.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Shadwell Print: Book
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray
respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to
read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater
part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication.
When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr.
Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the
memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Holland Manuscript: Unknown
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray
respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to
read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater
part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication.
When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr.
Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the
memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord John Russell Manuscript: Unknown
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray
respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to
read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater
part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication.
When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr.
Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the
memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Manuscript: Unknown
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray
respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to
read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater
part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication.
When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr.
Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the
memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Luttrell Manuscript: Unknown
'When Murray was about to publish Byron's "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina," he promised to
send the early sheets to Blackwood, who proposed to hold a dinner in honour of the occasion,
to which Scott, Erskine, and James Ballantyne were to be invited. Scott [...] unfortunately,
could not accept the invitation for the day named; but, to secure his attendance, the dinner
was put off for a week, and then he made his appearance with Erskine and Ballantyne. The
poems were read, to the immense delight of the audience.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Unknown
'When Murray was about to publish Byron's "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina," he promised to
send the early sheets to Blackwood, who proposed to hold a dinner in honour of the occasion,
to which Scott, Erskine, and James Ballantyne were to be invited. Scott [...] unfortunately,
could not accept the invitation for the day named; but, to secure his attendance, the dinner
was put off for a week, and then he made his appearance with Erskine and Ballantyne. The
poems were read, to the immense delight of the audience.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Unknown
Maria Graham to John Murray, 2 November 1817:
'Pray what is the 4th Canto of "Childe Harold" doing? and where is Lord Byron? You know my admiration for his works, and my thoughts for the best, the very best, of the man [...] I have seen but one new book -- a Danish account of the north of Africa, interesting and curious [...] It is straight from the Baltic, having been comissioned by my good friend, Dr. Ross'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Graham Print: Book
Caroline Norton to John Murray, 4 November 1837:
'I have received "Don Juan" and the October Quarterly [Review]. ... In thanking you for the two volumes of Byron belonging to the present beautiful edition, I must tell you that I had never read "Don Juan" [italics]through[end italics] before, which very few women in England of my age in England could say, -- and which I do not mind owning, since it adds greatly to the pleasure with which I perused the poem. I am afraid, in spite of the beauty, the wit, and the originality of the work, I think, with the Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] -- "Mi rincrese solo che Don Giovanni non resti al inferno." It is a book which no [italics]woman[end italics] will ever like, whether for the reasons given by the author, or on other accounts, I will not dispute. To me the effect is like hearing some sweet and touching melody familiar to me as having been sung by a lost friend and companion, suddenly struck up in quick time with all the words parodied.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Norton Print: Book
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'[Letter]
'And now to tell you my opinion of the ''Corsair''. I think it beautiful beyond all his other works.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Wedgwood Print: Book
