When Byron published the first two cantos of Don Juan in 1819 the first readers of the poem did not know what to make of it. It was a poem that they had to learn how to read. In exploring this claim, Prof Richard Cronin (University of Glasgow) will make another, much larger claim: the strategies Byron’s readers had to develop to understand this strange new poem were then applied to other works, as well. By the time Byron died, his readers were opening their copies of Chaucer or Shakespeare and were surprised to find that they seemed to be reading Byronic poets. Learning to read Don Juan had changed the way that they understood the whole history of English literature. Cronin suggests that Byron’s poem retains that power. In his talk, he will detail how after immersing himself in Don Juan for three or four years in order to write a book on that poem, he was surprised to find himself returning to Jane Austen and reading her very differently. ‘Jane Austen and Byron knew each other’s work but Jane Austen never had the opportunity to read Don Juan’, Cronin says. ‘Nevertheless it was the poem that Jane Austen never read, I now recognize, that had changed the way that I was reading her novels.’ In his talk, Prof Cronin will ask what that tells us about Jane Austen, and what it tells us about Byron.

This talk explores how Thomas Wildman curated Byron’s ancestral home of Newstead Abbey and the experience of visitors, both literary and utterly disinterested, thus creating a plethora of enduring impressions and lies about Byron. Dr Sam Hirst explores the research process in sorting through the rumours as well as the impact of Wildman’s curation on both contemporary understandings of Byron and on common present-day myths and misconceptions.

This talk explores how volcanos have shaped the Gothic as a genre and how Lord Byron emerged as the ultimate ‘Volcanic Gothic’ celebrity.

Byron’s public image as a scandalously ‘vampiric’ figure is well known from Polidori’s ‘The Vampire’ and Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon, but this paper explores how Byron and his admirers often preferred the volcanic metaphor to the vampiric as a means of talking about his poetic genius and fiery public persona.

This talk will set Byron’s work in the context of widespread scientific and popular interest in volcanos in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, from geological studies of Etna and Vesuvius to popular fascination with the excavations at Pompeii. I suggest that, as Gothic signifiers, the volcano and the vampire emerge as cultural cousins: both serve as portals in time where menaces from the past might be spewed forth to menace the present, and both producing uncannily petrified people as embodiments of Gothic anxiety.

Understanding how the Gothic has been shaped by volcanos affords us a new way of reading some of Byron’s most famous works and tracing his influences in texts as diverse as Little Women, Dracula and The Lord of the Rings.

IN-PERSON EVENT

Time: 6:30-8:00 GMT

Registration: Here

Enquiries: 

contact@thebyronsociety.com

Come and celebrate Byron’s birthday by reading and discussing together the poem in which he discovered his humorous poetic voice: the first work in which he used the Italian verse form of ottava rima to bring the characteristic light tone of his conversation and his letters into his poetry. In Beppo, published in 1818, the poet known for his melodramatic romances and gloomy meditations suddenly revealed himself as a witty and chatty raconteur, and this was the voice he chose for Don Juan from 1819.

The session—a reading of extracts from Beppo of about 30 minutes, followed by a discussion of the poem—will be chaired by Ken Robbie, Chairman of the Byron Society, and led by Dr Christine Kenyon Jones, Research Fellow of King’s College London and author of Dangerous to Show: Byron and his Portraits (2020) and Jane Austen & Lord Byron: Regency Relations (2024). Please contact us if you would like to volunteer as a reader for the event.

During this event, Geoffrey Bond will talk about his latest book – Byron’s Manor: Birthplace of his poetry –  which reveals that Burgage Manor (where Byron lived as a teenager and where Geoffrey has lived for over 30 years) is the genesis of Byron’s published poetry. Inspired by his friend and neighbour, Elizabeth Pigot, Byron was encouraged to write his first four collections of poems whilst living at Burgage Manor and to have them published in nearby Newark-on-Trent. The talk will touch on what it is like to live in a Byron house  – Geoffrey has written this book in the very room where Byron wrote his early poems – and the importance of Southwell and Newark in the Byron story.

This talk explores the improvisational music of Adam Mickiewicz in Dziady, or  “Forefathers’ Eve”, comparing such unrehearsed songs of exile with Byron’s treatment of  poet laureates in Don Juan (Bob Southey and “The Isles of Greece”).   Where  was spontaneous song possible; how did Mickiewicz, Pushkin, and Byron respond to the censorship of their publishers (John Murray, for example) and Czar Nicholas (to take another), who viewed them as Satanic poets or “Satan singing” (as Mickiewicz puts it in Dziady).  Archibald Macleish lamented the lack of respect for poetry in the United States during the Mickiewciz centennial celebrations. What do such responses tell us about Mickiewicz’s reception before, during and after the Cold War?

As definitions of Romanticism coalesced in the early 20^th century, with Wordsworth at their heart, Byron was increasingly sidelined – widely perceived as an aberrant and undesirable outlier whose prolific low-quality output had been inexplicably popular with contemporary audiences. This ungenerous and inaccurate assessment has since been overturned, with Byron resuming his place in both the poetic canon and international curricula.

Following the global celebration of Byron’s life and works throughout 2024, the 2025 Newstead Abbey Byron Conference will reflect on the aftermath of Byron’s death and offer an opportunity to discuss the shaping of his posthumous reputations – encompassing both the period immediately after his demise and the longer term damage to, and redemption of, his reputation as both a man and a poet.

The conference will be held in Newstead Abbey, and delegates will have the opportunity to tour the house and gardens during the conference. 

We will also be organising a trip to Annesley Church (owned by the Chaworth-Musters family whom Byron was intimately connected) on Friday morning before the start of the conference. The Church charges a small fee of £6 per person for a tour and coffee, which helps them pay for the upkeep of the building. This is not included in the Registration fee and will be collected separately.

Conference details

Programme details

Accommodation and Transport

Registration

In this online roundtable discussion the editors of Byron and Translation (Maria Schoina and Alex Grammatikos) will briefly introduce the aims of the book and invite the contributors (Diego Saglia, John Havard, Catherine Addison, Karen Caines, Filiz Turhan, and Anahit Bekaryan) to speak about their own chapters. The discussion will focus on the following questions: why was a book on Byron and translation important? How does translation influence Byron’s conception and writing of poetry? What causes do his translations serve? How does knowledge of Byron’s translation activity help us understand his oeuvre, as well as Romantic thought and writing?