supporting the study of Lord Byron's life and work
Please consider submitting an abstract for the BSA’s guaranteed panel at MLA 2017 in Philadelphia. Details below and at https://apps.mla.org/cfp_detail_8723. Due Tuesday 15 March!
Byron’s relationship to “being consumed” and to consumption in its various forms. Topics may include the poet’s attitudes toward ingestion; capitalism and commodification; illness and obsession. Abstract, 250 words. by 15 March 2016; submit to Ghislaine McDayter (mcdayter@bucknell.edu).
Please consider attending this exciting event next month. Direct questions to Dr. Robin Hammerman of Stevens Institute of Technology (rhammerm@stevens.edu).
AUSTEN AND BYRON: TOGETHER AGAIN
Thursday, April 21, 2016
4:00 to 9:00 P.M.
Drew University Library, in collaboration with the Jane Austen Society of North America/New York Metropolitan Region and the Byron Society of America, invites you to continue the exploration of this most elegant pairing of antipodal Romantic writers at the Drew University Library, home of the Byron Society Collection. This mini-conference will continue the conversation begun at the 2008 “Austen and Byron: Together at Last” conference held in New York City.
For both specialists and general readers of Austen and Byron, the occasion celebrates this year’s multiple focus within Romantic circles on the signal year of 1816—the year Byron’s Childe Harold III was published and Austen began writing Persuasion. From a general conversation on Persuasion to a special lecture by noted Romanticist Rachel Brownstein of Brooklyn College, this mini-conference will also radiate out to touch on conflicting forces in “The Spirit of the Age” that Austen and Byron clearly represent in the Regency years 1812-1818. Byronists and Janeites will likewise enjoy a special showcase of selected items from Drew University Library’s Byron Society Collection and items from the splendid Jane Austen Collection on loan for this occasion from Goucher College Special Collections & Archives. Specially conducted tours of the United Methodist Archives and History Center, home of Drew University Library Special Collections will complement the day’s events.
Program
4:00-4:15 p.m. Welcome (Chris Anderson, Head of Special Collections and University Archives, and Marsha Manns, Co-Founder of the Byron Society Collection.
4:14-5:30 p.m. Discussion led by Robert Ready, Dean of the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, on Austen’s Persuasion. Selected materials from the Byron Society Collection and the Austen collection at Goucher will be available for examination by discussion participants.
5:30-6:00 p.m. Coffee/tea/cake break and viewing of special exhibition of related materials from
Drew’s Byron Society Collection and Goucher’s Austen materials on loan for the event.
6:00-7:00 p.m. Lecture by Rachel Brownstein, Brooklyn College.
“Austen and Byron: Literary Taste and Judgment”
Rachel M. Brownstein has taught at the City University of New York since 1973. She is the author of three books: Becoming a Heroine: Reading about Women in Novels (1982),Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comedie-Francaise (1995), and Why Jane Austen? (2011).
7:15-9:00 p.m. Substantial wine and hors d’oeuvre reception and tours of the Special Collection Library.
All events take place in the United Methodist Archives Building.
Participants may register for the entire—or selected portions—of the event.
Please visit the event webpage: www.drew.edu/library/special-collections/austen_and_byron
Transportation to the Drew campus for those travelling between New York/Penn Station and Madison train station via. New Jersey Transit will be provided by shuttle bus according to the following schedule:
Trains arriving to Madison from NY Penn Station will be met by shuttle bus to transport attendees to the Drew campus at 3:33 pm and at 5:35 pm. The bus to transport attendees to the Madison train station from Drew will depart at 8:30 pm for the 8:54 train to NY Penn Station.
Please consider attending the next IABS conference in Paris, 4-7 July 2016. Details below and at http://www.internationalassociationofbyronsocieties.org/index.php/conferences/conference-announcements/item/49-call-for-papers-42nd-international-byron-conference-in-paris.
In 1816, the weather in Europe was dramatically affected by ash flying high around the globe from the remote Tambora volcano in Indonesia, which had erupted the year before. That same year, Byron’s life was as troubled as the climate in Europe. After one year of restless marriage, Byron weathered a domestic storm which disrupted his life, triggered his eventual departure from England, and offered his readers, contemporary and future, a wealth of new poetic works.
Taking the opportunity presented by the bicentennial of the climatic disorders of 1816, ‘the Year without a Summer’, the 42nd international conference will explore Byron’s life and loves, from a triple viewpoint: personal, poetical, and climatic.
Proposals for papers on these and other aspects of Byron and climatic poetry are welcome.
Please send 250-word proposals to ibc2016paris@yahoo.com by Sunday 14 February 2016 midnight.
Individual presentations must not exceed 20 minutes in length: if you are not sure it fits in the timeslot, please, rehearse!
Please note that in order to present a paper at the conference, speakers should be current members of a national Byron Society (like the Byron Society of America!).
Kevin Stevens, Graduate Coordinator of the Fordham Romanticism Group, provides an account of the Marchand Lecture by Julia Markus in Manhattan last Friday. Read it here!
Publishing, Editing, and Reception: Essays in Honor of Donald H. Reiman
Edited by Michael Edson
http://library.udel.edu/udpress/titles/publishingediting/
Table of Contents:
REMEMBERING DON REIMAN: THE PFORZHEIMER YEARS by Doucet Devin Fischer
INTRODUCTION by Michael Edson
Part 1: Romantic Publishing and Print Culture
Hermione de Almeida
Charles E. Robinson
Steven E. Jones
Part 2: New Perspectives on the Shelleys
Stuart Curran
Michael O’Neill
Timothy Webb
Part 3: Romantic Bards and Modern Editors
Alice Levine
David Greetham
Neil Fraistat
Part 4: Shelley’s Afterlives
B. C. Barker-Benfield
Michael J. Neth
Nora Crook
The Byron Society of America Presents
The Eleventh Leslie A. Marchand Memorial Lecture
In Partnership with the Fordham Romanticism Group
Julia Markus
Author of Lady Byron and Her Daughters
http://www.juliamarkuswrites.com/
Director of Creative Writing at Hofstra University
will speak on
Celebrating Lady Byron’s Life and Ada Lovelace’s Day
Friday, October 16, 2015
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
South Lounge
Event Details:
Wine and Cheese Reception: 5:00 – 6:00 P.M.
Lecture: 6:00 – 7:00 P.M.
Book Signing: 7:00 – 7:30 P.M.
RSVP by October 12, 2015, to John Bugg, bugg@fordham.edu
Please indicate whether you will be attending:
Reception Only
Lecture Only
Lecture and Reception
Directions to the South Lounge: Enter Fordham by the main entrance at 60th and Columbus. The South Lounge is on the Plaza Level, up one flight of escalators just beyond the cafeteria.
It is with great sadness and fond memories that the Byron Society of America recognizes the death of Peter Cochran, one of the most visible and influential Byron scholars of the past decades. The author and editor of numerous books on Byron and his circle, Peter was also a generous supporter of younger scholars, a formidable interlocutor on all matters of Regency life and letters, a loyal attendee of the International Byron Conferences, and a great storyteller, singer, and actor. He will be sorely missed by all of us.
A Letter from Peter’s Daughters, Abi and Emily:
May 21, 2015
Dear Loved ones and Friends of Peter,
Our adorable dad Peter sadly but quite wonderfully died last night. It was as though he’d written and directed the whole scene in advance.
He had a brain hemorrhage on Monday morning, the Doctors said he’d probably just last a few hours. 60 hours later he finally expired.
He was unresponsive and barely moving apart from a labored breath, it seemed unlikely he could hear us or was aware of anything. We stayed with him almost the whole time and talked to him occasionally regardless. We played him poetry and music that we knew he loved.
On Wednesday evening we were exhausted and distressed. After a day of playing him the Ring Cycle (his favourite 9 hour opera) we decided to read him highlights from the large pile of messages and cards he’d been sent over the past couple of weeks. We told him how much he was appreciated and loved, how many people had been grateful for all his work, teachings, writing and help over the years – signs of a life well lived. That all the people he’d inspired with his love of drama and literature would go on to inspire others, that he’d live on in all his writing and his grandchildren who loved him too.
We put his headphones back on and noticed his eyes had welled up.
We told him again how much he was loved, that it was ok to let go now, not to worry about anything, that we’d look after each other and take care of his work. Just a moment later his breathing slowed dramatically and then stopped.
We are still stunned and the strength of his spirit, to hold on so long, and to let go at will. We’ve been deeply grateful for the messages sent from all over the world in these past days – it has been a great comfort to all of us to know how loved he was.
Feel free to share your memories of him, we’ll be adding photos and recent work to his website. Please feel free to share this message with friends of Peter.
We’ll be planning a memorial service in the coming months.
Thanks and Warm wishes,
Abi and Emily Cochran
The Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at the NYPL has recently acquired a photograph of a lost painting of the young Lord Byron, allegedly painted by the well-known portraitist Sir Henry Raeburn in 1805, when the poet at 17 years old.
The painting was seen briefly in the 1890s and was sold for $2000 in the early twentieth century to an anonymous buyer (via the dealer William Clausen, in the Salvador de Mendonca sale). It has since disappeared from view. This photograph, which was discovered in an album of Byroniana acquired by the Pforzheimer in 2014, is now our best witness to this compelling lost portrait of Lord Byron.
When he sat for this portrait, Byron would have just finished his term at Harrow or perhaps begun his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. He had become Lord Byron in 1798, but his poetic career was still ahead of him at this point. One sees the recognizable high forehead, curly hair, and wide collar that would become part of the signature Byronic look.
Some have cast doubt on the authenticity of the painting, as no record of Byron sitting for Raeburn seems to exist. However, Raeburn did paint a picture of the wife of Byron’s godfather, Mrs. Robert Duff, around this time. Anyone with more information about the painting is encouraged to contact us.
A rather poor copy of the painting was published in Byron the Poet, ed. Walter A. Briscoe (London, 1924):
It was also imperfectly copied for Munsey’s Magazine 17 (p. 332), as part of a report on the Mendonca sale of Byron relics.
