Michael Steier wins the Elma Dangerfield Award for 2020

We are pleased to announce that BSA member Michael Steier has won this year’s Elma Dangerfield Prize from the IABS for his book, Byron, Hunt, and the Politics of Engagement, published in the Routledge Studies in Romanticism series.  Steir wrote his dissertation with Charles Robinson at the University of Delaware, and the book is based on that project.

The award committee calls Steier’s book “an assured performance…a hugely enjoyable book…This monograph will become the reference book on the Hunt/Byron connection, as well as a very useful resource on Byron generally, and on a large cast of figures, coteries, and literary-cultural phenomena from the 1810s to the 1820s.”

Quoting the Routledge description:

Byron, Hunt, and the Politics of Literary Engagement is the first full-length study of the friendship and literary relationship of two of the most important second-generation Romantic authors. Challenging long-held critical attitudes, this study shows that Byron and Hunt engaged in a creative and meaningful dialogue at each major stage in their careers, from their earliest published volumes of juvenile poetry and verse satire to their most celebrated contributions to Romantic literature: The Story of Rimini and Don Juan. Drawing upon newly recovered letters and unpublished manuscript material, this bookilluminates the surprisingly durable and artistically significant friendship of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt.”

Congratulations to Dr. Steier on this fine achievement!

Previous winners of the Elma Dangerfield Prize include Roderick Beaton, Peter Cochran, Paul Douglass, Paul Elledge, Caroline Franklin, Peter Graham, Malcom Kelsall, Ghislaine McDayter, Tom Mole, Diego Saglia, Miranda Seymour, Jonathon Shears, Clara Tuite, and Sarah Wootton.

https://www.internationalassociationofbyronsocieties.org/index.php/news

John Murray Archive: free trial access via Adam Matthew Digital

 Adam Matthew Digital has published a large selection of materials from The John Murray Publishing Archive at the National Library of Scotland:

Nineteenth Century Literary Society

The John Murray Publishing Archive

This resource makes available the most complete archival collection of Byron’s manuscripts and personal papers in a digital, full-text searchable format. Highlights include annotated drafts of Don Juan or letters around Byron’s affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. You can find out more via the brochure available here.

Given the importance of these materials for many any of you, even more so in light of the current limitations on international travel, I’m very excited to announce that Adam Matthew Digital is offering a free 30-day trial for all members until the end of the year. I’d encourage you to make use of this offer and to spread the word about this important collection among your fellow Byronists.

If you’re interested in the trial, please contact us. We will forward on your contact information to Adam Matthew Digital, and they will set you up with a username/password for the trial.

Two New Reviews of Interest to Byronists

Two reviews that might interest Byronists;

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/05/the-volcano-that-rewrote-history.html — on a new book on the eruption of Tambora in 1815 [and its effect on that Geneva Summer of 1816]

 

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1405325.ece

 

Review of Andrew McConnell Stott
THE VAMPYRE FAMILY
Passion, envy and the curse of Byron
464pp. Canongate. £25.
978 1 84767 871 3

Geoffrey Bond
LORD BYRON’S BEST FRIENDS
From bulldogs to Boatswain and beyond
120pp. Nick Hugh McCann. £25.
978 0 9516891 1 8