Vol. 19, No. 24

March 16, 2000

Byron Society collection finds
a home in Memorial Hall

The Byron Society of America Collection is a treasure trove of works, books, pamphlets, images and memorabilia related to the famous aristocratic, 19th-century Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824). According to Charles Robinson, English, and executive director of the Byron Society of America, Byron was a “fascinating and devilish figure, an extraordinary poet who could write not only beautiful lyrical poetry but also wonderful satiric verse which pricked the bubble of pretension and hypocrisy, in such works as Don Juan and Beppo.” Byron created “Promethean heroes who were proud and disdainful,” he said, and this concept of the Byronic figure was influential in English, French, Russian and Eastern European literature in the mid-19th century. The Byron collection at UD consists of more than 2,000 volumes, 400 pamphlets and 66 objects ranging from figurines and busts to strands of hair, medallions and letters, including an unpublished letter from Byron’s mother. Part of the collection is displayed in glass-fronted bookcases in the third floor lounge of Memorial Hall, but the bulk is locked in the nearby Byron Room. Last December, Robinson received a sizable gift (48 cartons to be precise) of books for the collection from Michael Rees, a Byron collector in Great Britain. A noted linguist and a former international executive with the pharmaceutical group Wellcome Foundation Inc., Rees recently entered a Cistercian monastery off the coast of Wales and donated his collection to society. Other generous contributions have greatly added to the collection, Robinson said, including 25 first editions from Kenneth Henriques of Bemidji State University in Minnesota, and approximately 200 volumes from the collection of Real de Melogue, donated by his son after his death. The Byron Society of America, a member of the International Council of Byron Societies with organizations in 37 countries, was founded in 1972 by Marcia Manns, AS ’71, a former student of Robinson’s, and by the late Leslie A. Marchand, a Byron scholar at Rutgers University and author of Byron, A Biography and editor of 12 volumes of Byron’s Letters and Journals. Manns works for Columbia University as director of its humanities center. “I love literature, and it is my avocation, which is how I became involved in the Byron Society,” she said. Manns and Dr. Marchand were both Byron collectors, and they have donated generously to the collection. She worked closely with Dr. Marchand, helping establish the Byron Society until his death at the age of 99 last year. She serves as chairperson of the Byron Society’s board. The first Leslie Marchand memorial lecture is scheduled Oct. 6 at UD. As the Byron Society’s collection grew, Robinson and Manns, who cochair the collection, began to seek an institutional home for the archive. In 1995, an agreement was signed for the collection to be housed at Delaware. “We have a wealth of material in the Byron collection,” Robinson said. “Our next task is cataloging the books, translations, criticisms, video and audio materials, manuscripts, stamps, posters, paintings, statuary, photographs and other Byron memorabilia and making it available to students and scholars and to the public by appointment.” A graduate of Mount Saint Mary’s College in Maryland with a doctorate from Temple University, Robinson joined the UD faculty in 1965. As a student, he became interested in the Romantic writers. He wrote his dissertation on Shelley and Byron, subsequently published as Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1976. Robinson was invited to give a lecture on the “The Effect of Byron’s Death in Greece on America” at the International Byron Conference in Missolonghi, Greece, in 1976. Held where Byron had died, the conference was memorable, and while there Robinson met Rees. Robinson also has edited Lord Byron and His Contemporaries: Essays from the Sixth International Byron Seminar, a three-day conference, held at UD in 1979. Robinson’s recent research has focused on Byron’s contemporary Mary Shelley and her works, including Frankenstein, and he has edited Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Mythological Dramas and The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley’s Novel, 1816-17. Active in the International Byron Society, he will deliver a lecture on “Byron and the 4th of July” in London on July 4th. –Sue Moncure