#letters and journals of lord byron

[pensiveant]

tumblr user @drops-of-universe // Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, Thomas Moore // tumblr user @introspectivescorpio, // Sweet Movie, Alisha Dietzman

[burningvelvet]

i thought nothing could be worse than the burning of byron’s memoirs but i stand corrected after reading jane austen’s poor wikipedia page

because at least we still have thousands of byron’s letters and journals which are mostly uncensored and which reveal his personality in all of it’s aspects, flaws and all, and everyone in his circle documented every detail of his life because he was a huge celebrity. his letters are considered some of the most brutally transparent ever written. i'm just using him as an example; him and austen shared the same publisher, lived during the same time, both very studied.

but with jane austen? we don’t get that honesty or that truly full picture. her relatives are the main sources of information, and all her surviving letters were carefully selected by them to portray her according to a specific agenda which would favor them, and so the true extent of her personality can never be as fully ascertained.

but at the same time... i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. she doesn't seem to have wanted attention for herself but to have likely preferred privacy, and her books have gotten more acclaim that she ever could have comprehended -- her books are the way we access her, her life, her thoughts and her voice. i think that about all writers, though i do love biographical criticism and biography.

some writers we know nothing about and some writers we know everything about -- at least they all live on in their writing, yes. but on the one hand, i'm grateful all writers live on in their work (as a fan of history and literature) and on the other hand, my unquenchable curiousity does get annoyed with the lack of available information. i would really love to read an extensive series of austen diaries. there is something sort of voyeuristic about this, i know, but there is also a love of preserving the niche parts of history, the parts that others overlook, the undervalued parts (letters, diaries, receipts, notes, scraps, drafts, juvenilia, etc.)

marcus aurelius wanted his diaries burned but perverse curiousity, likely driven by excessive admiration, led to their preservation, and thus we have his meditations which is now one of the most valued pieces of literature ever. so i think letters and diaries, and any piece of writing, does have immense value, even when it borders on a violation of privacy or has the potential to ruin a reputation.

i think this all simply ties in to the fact that i don't believe in book-burning in any form. embarrassing love letters from 1812 ARE important, depressing diary entries from 1818 ARE important. i could go on and on and on but the point is that i think all words and all history are imporant. in my classes we've discussed how archival technology is at the forefront of all human knowledge: what do we keep, what do we preserve, what do we spend more time on salvaging?

it just kills me that so much has been burned and destroyed, regardless of all the intense ethical discussions which could derive from all this, which could go on for a million years. my point is that it is tragic that so much of austen's work was destroyed, and it is tragic that byron's memoirs were destroyed even though we have so much of his work any way. any loss of writing is a loss to posterity.

[jesuisgourde]

A list of all the books mentioned in Peter Doherty's journals (and in some interviews/lyrics, too)

Because I just made this list in answer to someone's question on a facebook group, I thought I may as well post it here.

-The Picture of Dorian Gray/The Ballad Of Reading Gaol/Salome/The Happy Prince/The Duchess of Padua, all by Oscar Wilde -The Thief's Journal/Our Lady Of The Flowers/Miracle Of The Rose, all by Jean Genet -A Diamond Guitar by Truman Capote -Mixed Essays by Matthew Arnold -Venus In Furs by Leopold Sacher-Masoch -The Ministry Of Fear by Graham Greene -Brighton Rock by Graham Green -A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud -The Street Of Crocodiles (aka Cinnamon Shops) by Bruno Schulz -Opium: The Diary Of His Cure by Jean Cocteau -The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson -Howl by Allen Ginsberg -Women In Love by DH Lawrence -The Tempest by William Shakespeare -Trilby by George du Maurier -The Vision Of Jean Genet by Richard Coe -"Literature And The Crisis" by Isaiah Berlin -Le Cid by Pierre Corneille -The Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon -Junky by William S Burroughs -Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes -Futz by Rochelle Owens -They Shoot Horses Don't They? by Horace McCoy -"An Inquiry On Love" by La revolution surrealiste magazine -Idea by Michael Drayton -"The Nymph's Reply to The Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh -Hamlet by William Shakespeare -The Silver Shilling/The Old Church Bell/The Snail And The Rose Tree all by Hans Christian Andersen -120 Days Of Sodom by Marquis de Sade -Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke -Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard -In Favor Of The Sensitive Man and Other Essays by Anais Nin -La Batarde by Violette LeDuc -Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov -Intimate Journals by Charles Baudelaire -Juno And The Paycock by Sean O'Casey -England Is Mine by Michael Bracewell -"The Prelude" by William Wordsworth -Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Atalli -"Elm" by Sylvia Plath -"I am pleased with my sight..." by Rumi -She Stoops To Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith -Amphitryon by John Dryden -Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman -The Song Of The South by James Rennell Rodd -In Her Praise by Robert Graves -"For That He Looked Not Upon Her" by George Gascoigne -"Order And Disorder" by Lucy Hutchinson -Man Crazy by Joyce Carol Oates -A Pictorial History Of Sex In The Movies by Jeremy Pascall and Clyde Jeavons -Anarchy State & Utopia by Robert Nozick -"Limbo" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge -Men In Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century by George Haggerty

[arbitrary line break because tumble hates lists apparently]

-Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky -Innocent When You Dream: the Tom Waits Reader -"Identity Card" by Mahmoud Darwish -Ulysses by James Joyce -The Four Quartets poems by TS Eliot -Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare -A'Rebours/Against The Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans -Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet -Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell -The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren -Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates -"Epitaph To A Dog" by Lord Byron -Cocaine Nights by JG Ballard -"Not By Bread Alone" by James Terry White -Anecdotes Of The Late Samuel Johnson by Hester Thrale -"The Owl And The Pussycat" by Edward Lear -"Chevaux de bois" by Paul Verlaine -A Strong Song Tows Us: The Life of Basil Bunting by Richard Burton -Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes -The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri -The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling -The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling -Ask The Dust by John Frante -On The Trans-Siberian Railways by Blaise Cendrars -The 39 Steps by John Buchan -The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol -The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol -The Iliad by Homer -Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad -The Volunteer by Shane O'Doherty -Twenty Love Poems and A Song Of Despair by Pablo Neruda -"May Banners" by Arthur Rimbaud -Literary Outlaw: The life and times of William S Burroughs by Ted Morgan -The Penguin Dorothy Parker -Smoke by William Faulkner -Hero And Leander by Christopher Marlowe -My Lady Nicotine by JM Barrie -All I Ever Wrote by Ronnie Barker -The Libertine by Stephen Jeffreys -On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts by Thomas de Quincey -The Void Ratio by Shane Levene and Karolina Urbaniak -The Remains Of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro -Dead Fingers Talk by William S Burroughs -The England's Dreaming Tapes by Jon Savage -London Underworld by Henry Mayhew

[brain-depositary]

I think you've mentioned once that there was something fucky going on with Mary Shelley's gender. Where were you looking to find that? Is it in her journals? letters? I'm looking for a place to start.

I don’t remember if I said there was any solid evidence about Mary Shelley’s gender being fucky per se, but:

1. Frankenstein is a HEAVILY transmasculine book, like to an absurd degree. It’s possible that the transmasculine subtext was created by synthesizing a masculine viewpoint to stand in for “feminine” issues however (difficult pregnancies, presumed fragility in health/mind, incestuous abuse) because the issues were not safe for her to write about. For example, the incest issues in Frankenstein are buried while in her next book chronologically, Mathilda, was not, and it was not allowed to be published until the 1900s because her father blocked publication. The fact that Frankenstein managed to get, and still managed to get, so much under the radar makes me wonder if her viewpoint came from any self-knowledge.

2. Mary Shelley was friends with trans man and writer David Lyndsay/Walter Sholto Douglas, who she met after the first edition of Frankenstein (1818) was released, and he was sick with some kind of physical and mental illnesses and died before the more widely released 3rd edition (1831), which has been criticized for making Victor Frankenstein too sympathetic. And by “friends” I mean she engaged in a harebrained scheme to forge him and his wife papers so he would legally be a man when they moved to Paris, so, you know, grade A allyship from Mary Shelley. Anyway, the character of Victor is widely attributed to Percy Shelley and Lord Byron and him becoming more sympathetic has been attributed to changing social mores and the stage play but I’d be VERY curious if any of Lyndsay/Douglas made it in there, though this would take a shitton of research and my life has been too much of a garbage fire to get into this right now.

3. There could be stuff I’m forgetting but again, my life, garbage fire, etc. if anyone else has a suggestion here, I’d be very grateful.

So, anyone?

[laddersofsweetmisery]

My former English professor is retiring and gave away a bunch of the books in her office. She's a gem. I giddily returned to campus just to sort through her collection. Super excited about the ones I brought home with me. I thought someone else might appreciate some of the books I found.

I've already began poring over the poetry collections, but what should I read first? Are there any that you guys have read that you highly recommend?

Books included in Photo 1:

● Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Alta Edition includin Persuasion)

● Robert Burns by David Daiches

● Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

● Leigh Hunt's What is Poetry? by Albert S. Cook

● Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister by Aphra Behn

● Virginia Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell

● Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries 1776-1871 by Adam Zamoyski

● Earnest Victorians by Robert A. Rosenbaum

● Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals by Lord Byron, Leslie A. Marchand (Editor)

Books Included in Photo 2:

● Orlando by Virginia Woolf

● Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

● The Portable Irish Reader, (The Viking portable library) by Diarmuid Russell

● The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

● Becoming a Heroine by Rachel M. Brownstein

● To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf

● East Lynne by Ellen Wood, writing as Mrs Henry Wood

● Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope edited by Aubrey Williams

● In Memoriam; An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions) by Alfred Tennyson

● Daughters and Fathers by Lynda E. Boose, Betty S. Flowers

Books Included in Photo 3:

● Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

● A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne

● Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti (Dover Thrift Editions)

● Sound the Deep Waters: Women's Romantic Poetry in the Victorian Age includes works by Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Alice Meynell, and Edith Nesbit

● The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

● The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein by Thomas Hoobler and Dorothy Hoobler

● Wordsworth and the Poetry of Human Suffering by James H. Averill

● Victorian Ghost Stories: By Eminent Women Writers (Part of the The Virago Book Series) edited by Richard Dalby

● The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

● Victorian Poetry and Poetics by Walter E. Houghton G. Robert

[waltricia]

swans butterflies bees pollen flowers nature wind seasons transitions blooming green yellow blue pink red lilac Greece Zeus Eros/Psyche Odysseus/Penelope Leander Aphrodite fantasies gardens carriages mirrors emeralds candles shadows spotlights journals letters gossip writing purpose cake

kiss curls, pirate coat, red ring, dance cards, corset pro, bodice ripping?

dual identities, relationship parallels, romance romance romance, rom coms, friends to lovers, Lord Byron.

You are Pen.

Wake up Colin.

What.

A.

Barb.

[scotianostra]

January 22nd 1788 the poet George Gordon Byron, better known as Lord Byron was born in Holles Street, London

Lord Byron’s mother was Scottish, and for his first ten years they lived in Aberdeen, where he attended the Grammar, until he succeeded to his title. He always considered himself a Scot. He wrote in Don Juan: ‘But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred /A whole one, and my heart flies to my head…’

The most glamorous member of the second generation of Romantic poets, he was a prolific writer, led a scandalous life, and died in the Greek war of independence, aged 34. . Apart from his short lyrics, his poetry is perhaps less read now than his extraordinarily vivid letters and journals; his life continues to intrigue readers, scholars and film-makers.

Of course the Scots remember him for the brilliant poem Lochnagar, a favourite of my friend Roland, adapted into a folk song by The Corries, but I am going to post another of his “Scottish” poems called When I Roved A Young Highlander.

When I roved a young Highlander o'er the dark heath,

And climb’d thy steep sumrnit, oh Morven of snow!

To gaze on the torrent that thunder’d beneath,

Or the mist of the tempest that gather’d below,

Untutor’d by science, a stranger to fear,

And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew,

No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear

Need I say, my sweet Mary, 'twas centred in you?

Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name,-

What passion can dwell in the heart of a child?

But still I pereceive an emotion the same

As I felt, when a boy, on the crag cover’d wild:

One image alone on my bosom impress’d

I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new;

And few were my wants, for my wishes were bless’d;

And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with you.

I arose with the dawn; with my dog as my guide,

From mountain to mountain I bounded along

I breasted the billows of Dee’s rushing tide,

And heard at a distance the Highlander’s song:

At eve, on my heath-cover’d couch of repose,

No dreams, save of Mary, were spread to my view;

And warm to the skies my devotions aoose,

For the first of my prayers was a blessing on you.

I left my bleak home, and my visions are gone;

The mountains are vanish’d, my youth is no more;

As the last of my race, I must wither alone,

And delight but in days I have witness’d before:

Ah! splendour has raised but embitter’d my lot;

More dear were the scenes which my infancy knew:

Though my hopes may have fail’d, yet they are not forgot;

Though cold is my heart, still it lingers with you.

When I see some dark hill point its crest to the sky,

I think of the rocks that o'ershadow Colbleen

When I see the soft blue of a love-speaking eye

I think of those eyes that endear’d the rude scene;

When, haply, some light-waving locks I behold,

That faintly resemble my Mary’s in hue,

I think on the long, flowing ringlets of gold,

The locks that were sacred to beauty, and you.

Yet the day may arrive when the mountains once more

Shall rise to my sight In their mantles of snow:

But while these soar above me, unchanged as before

Will Mary be there to receive me? - ah, no!

Adieu, then, ye hills, where my childhood was bred!

Thou sweet flowing Dee, to thy waters adieu!

No home in the forest shall shelter my head,–

Ah! Mary, what home could be mine but with you?

[empirearchives]

Lord Byron and Napoleon

Someone responded to my Lord Byron post saying they were surprised Lord Byron liked Napoleon. Let’s just say this, Lord Byron was obsessed with Napoleon. He was his “alter ego.” He loved him.

Like most of the Romantics, Napoleon was his muse. He was not a propagandist. He was able to write about Napoleon in a nuanced way and explore different aspects. For example, his “Ode Napoleon Buonaparte” is a sharp criticism which expresses his utter disappointment in Napoleon for abdicating. He hated Napoleon for his defeat, but he loved him for his cause.

Lord Byron had a bust of Napoleon since he was a young boy. He modelled his carriage on Napoleon’s carriage. He had engravings of Napoleon in his room and collected mementos of Napoleon long after his death in 1821. He referred to Napoleon as his “little pagod.” People around him said that the vicissitudes of Napoleon’s life affected his personality. He mattered to him a lot. This is what he said in a letter to his friend after Napoleon’s defeat: “I detest the cause and the victors – and the victory.” (Quote source)

He was hard on Napoleon because he believed in him, but he was devotedly loyal. Notice that he died in exile, just like Napoleon. Thomas Medwin explains that Lord Byron admired Napoleon so much that he came to envy him. Like Beethoven, his admiration turned into a desire to replicate. Beethoven once said he wanted “to conquer” the conqueror.

If anyone is interested in learning more about Lord Byron and Napoleon, I’ve provided some links. Any good book about Lord Byron should mention it. But most biographies about Napoleon will not mention it because it was a parasocial relationship for Lord Byron.

Some but not all sources on the topic:

Between Emperor and Exile: Byron and Napoleon (source)

Byron’s Napoleonic Poems (source)

Beethoven, Byron, and Bonaparte - part 1 (source)

Beethoven, Byron, and Bonaparte - part 2 (source)

Lord Byron Reacts to the News - Napoleon's 100 Days (source)

Lord Byron and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte between the Ode and Waterloo (source)

Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron […] in the Years 1821 and 1822, By Thomas Medwin (source)

Manuscript of Byron’s additional stanzas to ‘Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,’ 1814 (source)

[dreams-of-mutiny]

MORTIMER ADLER’S READING LIST (PART 2)

Reading list from “How To Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler (1972 edition).

Alexander Pope: Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man

Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu:��Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws

Voltaire: Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary

Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones

Samuel Johnson: The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

David Hume: Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile, The Social Contract

Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations

Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace

Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography

James Boswell: Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison: Federalist Papers

Jeremy Bentham: Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust; Poetry and Truth

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier: Analytical Theory of Heat

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History

William Wordsworth: Poems

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems; Biographia Literaria

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice; Emma

Carl von Clausewitz: On War

Stendhal: The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love

Lord Byron: Don Juan

Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism

Michael Faraday: Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity

Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology

Auguste Comte: The Positive Philosophy

Honore de Balzac: Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative Men; Essays; Journal

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter

Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America

John Stuart Mill: A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography

Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography

Charles Dickens: Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times

Claude Bernard: Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience; Walden

Karl Marx: Capital; Communist Manifesto

George Eliot: Adam Bede; Middlemarch

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick; Billy Budd

Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov

Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary; Three Stories

Henrik Ibsen: Plays

Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger

William James: The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism

Henry James: The American; ‘The Ambassadors

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals; The Will to Power

Jules Henri Poincare: Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method

Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

George Bernard Shaw: Plays and Prefaces

Max Planck: Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography

Henri Bergson: Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

John Dewey: How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic; the Theory of Inquiry

Alfred North Whitehead: An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas

George Santayana: The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places

Lenin: The State and Revolution

Marcel Proust: Remembrance of Things Past

Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy; The Analysis of Mind; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits

Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain; Joseph and His Brothers

Albert Einstein: The Meaning of Relativity; On the Method of Theoretical Physics; The Evolution of Physics

James Joyce: ‘The Dead’ in Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses

Jacques Maritain: Art and Scholasticism; The Degrees of Knowledge; The Rights of Man and Natural Law; True Humanism

Franz Kafka: The Trial; The Castle

Arnold J. Toynbee: A Study of History; Civilization on Trial

Jean Paul Sartre: Nausea; No Exit; Being and Nothingness

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The First Circle; The Cancer Ward

Source: mortimer-adlers-reading-list

[cashthecomposer]

Any good resources you can recommend to learn more about the inspiration for you musical?

Yes! Here's a list to get you started- each title will link to a place to read or buy the thing!

The Clairmont Correspondence

These are a collection of Claire Clairmont's letters. I wanted to be true to her voice, as she is often the most muted in many adaptations of the story- and it is really her story, more than anyone else's.

The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron

Some Unpublished Letters of Mary Shelley

The Life and Letters of Mary Shelley

The Correspondence between Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley

Though Claire's letters were the most important to me, I also gathered a lot of character info, dialogue inspo, and plot points from the letters of Byron, Mary, and Percy. There's some overlap in these, but it's still worth it to read everything.

The Diary of John Polidori

John is a very insular character, and most of his presentation in the musical is self-reflection. So, I had to read his thoughts. And boy, the guy was depressed AF.

Then, there are the various stories told within the show... get ready for this:

Don Juan

Le Morte Fiancee & The Family Portraits, from Fantasmagoriana

Christabel

Darkness

Fragment of a Novel

The Vampyre

A Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus

Note that for the Frankenstein text I selected, I chose the original 1818 text, purely because this is the original, the least edited, and in my opinion, the best. Far too many people only know the 1831 version, which is so far removed from that original summer I feel it is irrelevant.

This Article from the New York Times that was totally viewable back when I actually started researching for this show back in 2015 without a subscription so here's the web.archive link yo

After my dad suggested this story as the basis for a show to me back in 2015 (my god, 8 years ago???) this article was the very first thing I read about the Shelleys and Byron, and their summer at Diodati, and it got me hooked. I recommend giving it a read. It's great writing, and the sort of thing that NYT no longer writes nearly frequently enough anymore.

I immediately purchased the following three books, cited as sources by that article:

Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life

Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives

Byron and the Romantics in Switzerland, 1816

Followed by like... hundreds more books, articles, etc. But those three are a great start! If anything, I'd add this book, purely because it's more well known and referenced than those three, and takes a more Byron-centric view that, well, gels more with the portrayal of events in my show.

Thank you for this question! I'm going to post this list on my Patreon as well, where I'll go more into detail on each resource. :)

[talesofpassingtime]

She kept a journal, where his faults were noted,       And open’d certain trunks of books and letters, All which might, if occasion served, be quoted;       And then she had all Seville for abettors, Besides her good old grandmother (who doted);       The hearers of her case became repeaters, Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges, Some for amusement, others for old grudges.

— Lord Byron, Don Juan 

[statecryptids]

Another book review! I was hoping to post this back in October for spooky season, but work and class got in the way. So I'm posting it now to start off the new year.

MARY'S MONSTER

written and illustrated by Lita Judge

The common story of how Mary Shelley came to write Frankenstein is that she conceived the plot during a ghost-writing contest while she, her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her sister Claire were staying at the manor house of Lord Byron and his personal physician, John Polidori. Some might add that she took inspiration from an experiment in galvanism she had witnessed a few weeks earlier.  But Lita Judge’s evocative book, told through prose poetry, posits that the novel grew for many years within Mary’s mind, sewn together from the tragedies and drama of her life. It grew from the deaths that surrounded her: her children; her neglected sister; Percy Shelley’s abandoned first wife; and Mary’s own mother who died giving birth to her. It grew from her feelings of estrangement towards her once-beloved father who did not approve of her romance with the young poet.  It grew from the anger of her sister Fanny “shackled by illegitimacy and despair”. And it grew from Percy Shelley’s own growing madness “because society loathes him for his beliefs”. Out of these parts Mary made her creation, so Judge writes, stitching them into a greater whole just as Victor Frankenstein assembled his creature from corpses.

The book is told in first person from Mary’s perspective, giving the reader a personal connection with her pain and her joy. At critical moments the voice of her creature also emerges as an extension of her. A literary child just as precious to her as the biological children she lost.

Central to Mary’s story is her turbulent relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. How they came to love each other and fled to Europe to try to build a life through loss, ostracization, and Shelley’s growing mania. Equally important to the narrative is Mary’s relationship with her sister Claire, who travels with the couple and shares in Mary’s pain and joy. And, then, of course the book depicts the fateful ghost-writing contest at Byron’s chateau, when Mary’s creature finally comes to life and speaks with his own voice.

The book gives context to some of the more macabre events in Mary’s life, such as when she first makes love to Shelley on her mother’s grave, or how she rescues his physical heart after he is cremated and keeps it in her writing desk for the rest of her life. Both acts keep her deceased loved ones close to her.

Judge’s evocative black-and-white illustrations accompany and enhance each poem, steeping the book in a gothic aesthetic. This is a passion project for the author, undertaken- as she explains in the afterward- while she struggled with pain, fatigue, and isolation during a long illness. “I have represented the details of Mary’s life,” she writes, “by weaving the actual events (as documented in her journals, copious letters, and later biographies) with the themes she and Shelley wrote about in their creative work.” The author does acknowledge that, although this book draws from facts, it is a dramatization of Mary’s experiences.  Judge provides an extensive bibliography for further reading, along with a list of what the characters themselves read, to provide some context for their lives. She also includes short biographical notes of what happened to everyone later in life.

You can get a copy of Mary's Monster at Bookshop.org. Or, like, Amazon if you want.

[burningvelvet]

Every Instance of Lord Byron Hating On John Keats, Listed in Chronological Order.

“No more Keats I entreat — flay him alive. If some of you don’t I must skin him myself.”

To his publisher John Murray, 12 October 1820:

“‘I’m thankful for your books dear Murray / But why not send Scott’s Monastery?’ the only book in four living volumes I would give a baioccho to see, abating the rest of the same author, and an occasional Edinburgh & Quarterly – as brief Chroniclers of the times. — Instead of this – here are John Keats’s piss a bed poetry – and three novels by God knows whom [..] Pray send me no more poetry but what is rare and decidedly good. — There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables – that I am ashamed to look at them. [..] – I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott’s Monastery. – You are too liberal in quantity and somewhat careless of the quality of your missives. – [..] No more Keats I entreat – – – flay him alive – if some of you don’t I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin. – – – – – [editor’s note: ‘dashes degenerate into scrawl’]”

To his publisher John Murray, 4 November 1820:

“They Support Pope I see in the Quarterly. [Let them] Continue to do so – it is a Sin & a Shame and a damnation – to think that Pope!! should require it – but he does. – – – Those miserable mountebanks of the day – the poets – disgrace themselves – and deny God – in running down Pope – the most faultless of Poets, and almost of men – – the Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch or whatever his names are; – why his is the Onanism of Poetry — something like the Pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane – this went on for some weeks – at last the Girl – went to get a pint of Gin – met another, chatted too long – and Cornelli was hanged outright before she returned. Such like is the trash they praise – and such will be the end of the outstretched poesy of this miserable Self-polluter of the human Mind [editor’s note: ‘untranscribable scrawl’]. W. Scott’s Monastery just arrived — many thanks for that Grand Desideratun of the last Six Months.”

Note: “onanism” refers to masturbation.

To his publisher John Murray, 9 November 1820:

“Mr. Keats whose poetry you enquire after — appears to me what I have already said; such writing is a sort of mental masturbation — he is always frigging his Imagination. I don’t mean that he is indecent, but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a state which is neither poetry nor any thing else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium.”

Note: “frigging” was slang for masturbation.

To his publisher John Murray, 18 November 1820:

“P.S. — Of the praises of that little dirty blackguard Keates in the Edinburgh — I shall observe as Johnson did when Sheridan the actor got a pension. ‘What has he got a pension? then it is time that I should give up mine!’ — Nobody could be prouder of the praises of the Edinburgh than I was — or more alive to their censure — as I showed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers — at present all the men they have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. — Why don't they review & praise ‘Solomon's Guide to Health’ it is better sense — and as much poetry as Johnny Keates.”

To his publisher John Murray 26 April 1821:

“Is it true – what Shelley writes me that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it – though I think he took the wrong line as a poet – and was spoilt by Cockneyfying and Surburbing – and versifying Tooke’s Pantheon and Lempriere’s Dictionary. I know by experience that a savage review is Hemlock to a sucking author – and the one on me – (which produced the English Bards &c.) knocked me down – but I got up again. Instead of bursting a blood-vessel – I drank three bottles of Claret – and began an answer – finding that there was nothing in the Article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head in an honourable way. However I would not be the person who wrote the homicidal article – for all the honour & glory in the World, – though I by no means approve of that School of Scribbling – which it treats upon.”

To Percy Shelley, 26 April 1821:

“I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats — is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow! though with such inordinate self-love he would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of ‘Endymion’ in the Quarterly. It was severe, — but surely not so severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.

I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress — but not despondency nor despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena. ‘Expect not life from pain nor danger free, Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.’

You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry, — because it is of no school. [..] I have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I known that Keats was dead — or that he was alive and so sensitive — I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing.”

To Percy Shelley, 30 July 1821:

[First page missing] “The impression of Hyperion upon my mind was – that it was the best of his works. Who is to be his editor? It is strange that Southey who attacks the reviewers so sharply in his Kirk White – calling theirs ‘the ungentle craft’ – should be perhaps the killer of Keats. Kirke White was nearly extinguished in the same way – by a paragraph or two in ‘the Monthly’ – Such inordinate sense of censure is surely incompatible with great exertion – have not all known writers been the subject thereof?”

To his publisher John Murray 30 July 1821:

“Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and accuses the Quarterly of killing him?

‘Who killed John Keats? / ‘I,’ says the Quarterly, / So savage and Tartarly; / ‘Twas one of my feats.’ / Who shot the arrow? / ‘The poet-priest Milman / (So ready to kill man), / Or Southey or Barrow.’’

You know very well that I did not approve of Keats’s poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of Pope; but, as he is dead, omit all that is said about him in any M.S.S. of mine, or publication. His Hyperion is a fine monument, and will keep his name. I do not envy the man who wrote the article; — you Review people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However, he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption.”

4 August 1821, to his publisher John Murray:

“You must however omit the whole of the observations against the Suburban School – they are meant against Keats and I cannot war with the dead – particularly those already killed by Criticism. Recollect to omit all that portion in any case.”

To his publisher John Murray, 7 August 1821:

“All the part about the Suburb School must be omitted – as it referred to poor Keats now slain by the Quarterly Review — [..] I have just been turning over the homicide review of J. Keats. – It is harsh certainly and contemptuous but not more so than what I recollect of the Edinburgh R. of ‘the Hours of Idleness’ in 1808. The Reviewer allows him ‘a degree of talent which deserves to be put in the right way’ ‘rays of fancy’ ‘gleams of Genius’ and ‘powers of language’. – It is harder on L. Hunt than upon Keats & professes fairly to review only one book of his poem. – Altogether – though very provoking it was hardly so bitter as to kill unless there was a morbid feeling previously in his system.”

To Thomas Moore, August 27th 1822:

“It was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's pocket, but John Keats's poems.”

From his poem Don Juan Canto Eleventh written October 1822 and published August 1823. He was going off the popular gossip shared to him by Shelley (who believed it), which was that Keats health had sharply declined due to receiving bad reviews:

“John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, / Just as he really promised something great, / If not intelligible, without Greek / Contrived to talk about the Gods of late, / Much as they might have been supposed to speak. / Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; / ‘Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, / Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.”

To his publisher John Murray, 25 December 1822:

“As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in – but I have lived in three or four – and none of them like his Keats and Kangaroo terra incognita – Alas! poor Shelley! – how he would have laughed – had he lived, and how we used to laugh now & then – at various things – which are grave in the Suburbs. You are all mistaken about Shelley – – you do not know – how mild – how tolerant – how good he was in Society – and as perfect a Gentleman as ever crossed a drawing room; – when he liked – & where he liked. – – – – –“

The excerpts above are taken primarily from Peter Cochran’s transcriptions.

[particularlyno0ne]

[laddersofsweetmisery]

So excited to start the books I've picked out for October. I'm especially eager to read this little beauty. Two chapters in and I'm appreciative of the amount of research and care taken to tell the lesser-known elements of the behind-the-scenes narrative of Mary Shelley's masterpiece, Frankenstein. She's so fascinating. More so, I am always floored by anything new I learn regarding her mother, often regarded as the first feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, is a biography of sorts exploring the lives and work of Mary Shelley’s haunted circle of literary contemporaries—with a particular focus on the four poets and friends with her the stormy night she was inspired to write her gothic tale. Also featured in the book are those who influenced her magnum opus, Frankenstein, but were only in the room with her in spirit.

Poets and friends from that stormy night:

Lord Byron was that famous English Poet described in the book as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” He’s attractive, intimidating, and has a thing for scaring his guests. After frightening his guests with a reading of Fantasmagoriana, a collection of German horror stories, during a stormy night, he proposed a contest where they all take a shot at writing a ghost story of their own.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, or “Mad Shelley,” was fascinated by the occult and married to our equally fascinating Mary Shelley. He wasn’t as popular for his work during his life, likely because it was cut short when he drowned at 29, but his work gained notoriety after his death. He is considered one of the major English Romantic poets.

Dr. John Polidori is credited for the first and most influential novel about a human vampire: The Vampyre. His haunted figure is likely inspired by Byron himself. The two didn’t really get along. The Vampyre was also written as part of the ghost story contest proposed by Lord Byron.

Claire Clairmont was the mother of Lord Byron’s illegitimate child and Shelley’s stepsister.  

Before we make our way into Mary Shelley’s circle, we are introduced to her immutable parents William Godwin and his wife, who I’m casually obsessed with, Mary Wollstonecraft. No joke, their love story will bring you to literal tears, my god. I felt genuinely sick reading about her death and how those who very clearly despised her feminist views took her death as an example of the weakness of her sex. I hope she haunted those fuckers to madness.

Wanna read with me this October? I'll be reading the following books over this month, feel free to pick them up, too! This year, the classics are calling my name 🎃🕯 Since starting Monsters, I'm really craving more so I’ll be reading and rereading works that relate to it in some way :)

Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler (We’re starting here, obviously.)

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (We just have to!!!) Available on Kindle Unlimited

An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, by William Godwin (We just have to read from the parents who raised our beloved Mary Shelley.)

The Wrongs of Woman, or, Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft (Again, we have to! Plus, it’s one of my favorites. I need to share it with everyone who crosses my path.)

Fantasmagoriana, “Tales of the Dead” (Why not read what inspired that stormy night writing contest?) Available on Kindle Unlimited

Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals, edited by Leslie Marchand (I wanna know more about this fella. He is also mentioned in The Wager. This one might be a little hard to find, but I’ll post what I can.)

The Vampyre, by Dr. John Polidori (Let’s end our October reading about a lil vamp and finding the comparisons to Byron.) Available on Kindle Unlimited

I'll be posting my thoughts and pages that stick out to me at the end of each day <3

[iredreamer]

Where does the habit of keeping a lock of hair in lockets come from?

And why did Anne Lister keep a lock of female pubic hair in lockets?

Did her lovers consented it? I know Ann Wolker consented it.

I did not know that keep a female pubic hair in a lock was a victorian sapphic thing until I read about another woman doing the same thing. "I like having the ones I love with me." Or something like that she wrote. Maybe one of the ways to have the ones she loved with her was to keep a female pubic hair in a lock? Sorry to rant in your ask box.

hey, no need to say sorry :)

This is a very interesting topic and it has quite a history – I’m gonna try to be brief and not write an essay about it.

First thing I want to clarify is that Anne lived most of her life during the Georgian Era (1714-1830) / Regency period (1811-1820) and not the Victorian Era (1837-1901) – she died in 1840 and really only saw the start of Queen Victoria’s reign. We should keep this in mind when trying to understand the broader meaning and the context of some of the peculiar things she mentions in her journals.

In the 19th century it was not uncommon to exchange hair lockets as tokens of affection. So, keeping the hair – not specifically pubic hair, just hair – of a loved one was not an exclusively “sapphic thing” – keeping the hair of a loved one was a romantic gesture and a practice amongst lovers in general.

Mentions of this practice can even be found in literature. For example in “Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis” (1802) by Ugo Foscolo (Anne was a fan by the way) the protagonist weaves a lock of his own hair into the braid secretly given to him by Teresa (the woman he loved).

The practice of cutting and keeping the hair of a loved one is maybe a sort of evolution of the 16th century lovelock (its purpouse was to show devotion to a loved one), which is speculated may have originated as an alternative to the love token worn by knights during the medieval period.

I’m gonna focus on Anne’s time and not go into detail about the whole history of hair lockets.

We don't know how common it was to gift pubic hair but, in some testimonies of the time (first third of the 19th century), there is mention of curls of pubic hair given as a token of love.

According to Tony Perrottet, the archives of the Museum of St. Andrews University in Scotland still hold a locket containing curls of pubic hair trimmed from the Mons Veneris of a Royal Courtesan of King George IV.

We can also find mention of this practice in some of the letters between Lord Byron and Lady Lamb. For example, on 9 August 1812 Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron's lover, sends the poet a very intimate gift: her pubic hair. The letter reads:

“I asked you not to send blood but yet do – because if it means love I like to have it. I cut the hair too close & bled much more than you need – do not you the same & pray put not scizzar points near where quei capelli grow – sooner take it from the arm or wrist - pray be careful...”

I think we can safely guess that gifting pubic hair instead of just hair was taking things to a whole new personal and emotional level.