Allan Massie
Byron Tells All
The Memoirs of Lord Byron
By Robert Nye
Hamish Hamilton 215pp £11.95
Scholars still regret the lost plays of the Athenian dramatists; feminists and other critics may deplore the lost poems of Sappho; for many of us however the memoirs of Byron remain the most grievous of literary losses, all the more because their destruction was not the work of time, but of stupidity, prudery and malice. The only two known copies of the manuscript, which Byron had entrusted to Tom Moore, were torn up and burned in the grate of John Murray’s office in Albemarle street; you can still see the grate and the best that can be said of the occasion is that the Murray family have atoned for this act of vandalism by their devotion to the memory of the greatest author they have ever had. Those present on Monday, the 17th May, 1824, less than a month after Byron’s death, were John Murray, Tom Moore, John Cam Hobhouse, and legal representatives of Lady Byron and of Mrs Augusta Leigh, Byron’s half sister. Hobhouse justified the deed: ‘The whole Memoirs were fit only for a brothel, and would damn Lord B to everlasting infamy if published.’ According to Byron’s biographer, Leslie Marchand, Hobhouse had never actually read the manuscript.
They have now been re-created, with sympathetic intelligence, and with admirable grace and virtuosity, by Robert Nye. He has not given us precisely the book which Byron might have written and which he entrusted to Moore in 1819, sending a further eighteen sheets the following year. Instead, he adds two
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk