Reading Byron LIVERPOOL ENGLISH TEXTS AND STUDIES 92 READING BYRON Poems – Life – Politics BERNARD BEATTY introduced by Jerome McGann edited by David Woodhouse and concluded in conversation with Gavin Hopps Reading Byron LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS First published 2022 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2022 Liverpool University Press Bernard Beatty, Gavin Hopps, Jerome McGann and David Woodhouse have asserted the right to be identified as the authors and editors of this book in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978-1-80085-462-8 eISBN 978-1-80085-529-8 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster in memory of Vincent Newey 1943–2020 Contents contents List of Illustrations ix Abbreviations xi Notes on Author and Contributors xiii Author’s Foreword xv Introduction by Jerome McGann 1 PART I: POEMS Reading Byron’s Poems 10 1 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: Types of History 17 2 Lara: Acts of Will 37 3 Understanding Manfred: The Sense of an Ending 59 4 Cain: One Drama, Two Orthodoxies 85 5 Empty Spaces in Don Juan: A Reading of the Norman Abbey Cantos 115 PART II: LIFE Reading Byron’s Life 138 6 At Albany 141 7 At Seaham 153 8 From Venice to Ravenna 169 vii reading byron PART III: POLITICS Reading Byron’s Politics 184 9 Liberty and Licence 187 10 The Paradoxes of Nationalism 197 11 Byron as Political Icon 207 Conversations with Gavin Hopps 221 Bernard Beatty: A Bibliography 241 Acknowledgements 249 General Bibliography 251 Index 259 viii Illustrations Illustrations 1. Albany in 1830 after a drawing by Thomas H. Shepherd. Byron’s rooms were on the ground floor at the back of the house. 140 2. Seaham Hall in the mid-nineteenth century. 154 3. Palazzo Guiccioli, Ravenna. Byron’s study (in which he wrote Cain) is on the second floor immediately to the right of the balcony. 171 ix Abbreviations Abbreviations BCH Byron: The Critical Heritage, ed. Andrew Rutherford (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970). BLJ Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie Marchand, 13 vols (London: John Murray, 1974–94). CHP Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (all references are to Canto and stanza unless otherwise stated). CMP Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). CPW Lord Byron: Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann and Barry Weller, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–93). CVA Lord Byron’s Cain: Twelve Essays and a Text with Variants and Annotations, ed. Truman Guy Steffan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968). DJ Byron’s Don Juan (all references are to Canto and stanza unless otherwise stated). HVSV His Very Self and Voice: Collected Conversations of Lord Byron, ed. Ernest J. Lovell Jr (New York: Macmillan, 1954). PL Paradise Lost (all references are to Book and line number using the text in The Complete Poems of John Milton, ed. B.A. Wright [London: Dent, new edition 1980]). All references to Byron’s poems other than CHP and DJ use the line numbers of CPW unless otherwise stated (for some shorter or interpolated poems, a page reference is provided for ease of location). References to the Bible are to the Authorized King James Version. Quotations (and line numberings) are taken from the following editions: The Poetry of John Keats, ed. Jack Stillinger (London: Heinemann, 1978); The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (one-volume Twickenham edition, xi