Bicentenary of Lord Byron's death: read him fearlessly

An edition of Charlotte's juvenilia with her copy of
William Finden's The Maid of Saragoza 
from Finden’s Landscape and Portrait Illustrations of
Lord Byron’s Life and Works.

Today, April 19th marks the bicentenary of the death of Lord Byron in Greece. He was one of the heroes of the Brontës' childhood and beyond: Heathcliff, Mr Rochester and Branwell's poetry and swagger are all clearly influenced by Lord Byron. But also the Brontës' own menagerie and--as Ellen Nussey would put it-- their love of 'dumb creatures' as well as many storylines in their juvenilia and games which were all inspired by what they knew of Lord Byron's life and works. Many of their drawings were copies of engravings from his works. It also says much about Patrick's education and upbringing of his children that he allowed them total freedom to read his works and first biography by Thomas Moore at a time when Lord Byron was deemed 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know' as Lady Caroline Lamb had summed him up years before. Lady Byron coined the term Byromania and the Brontës certainly caught it from a very early age, never fully shedding it. Here's a prim 18-year-old Charlotte advising Ellen Nussey on what to read on 4 July 1834:

If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith Pope (if you will though I don't admire him) Scott, Byron, Camp[b]ell, Wordsworth and Southey Now Ellen don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great Men and their works are like themselves, You will know how to chuse the good and avoid the evil, the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting    you will never wish to read them over twice, Omit the Comedies of Shakespeare and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain of Byron though the latter is a magnificent Poem and read the rest fearlessly

The Washington Post has an article on the bicentenary highlighting Andrew Stauffer’s recent biography Byron: A Life in Ten Letters, which is excellent, but also the big impact Byron and his creations had in the literary world.

All too soon he would be dead, leaving behind brokenhearted friends and lovers but also a new literary archetype: the proud, moodily introspective and sexually magnetic Byronic hero, half Apollo, half Satan. Examples range from Alexandre Dumas’s dark avenger, the Count of Monte Cristo, and Emily Bronté’s tempestuous Heathcliff to the myriad bad boys and brooding heroes of modern romance novels. (Michael Dirda)

In other news, Mirage reports that the University of Exeter is planning an event to honour Jean Rhys.

After five years in Bude, Cornwall, Rhys moved to Cheriton Fitzpaine in 1960, and it was there that she returned to the public eye as a writer, most notably with Wild [sic] Sargasso Sea. Written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Wild [sic] Sargasso Sea imagines the background to Mr Rochester's marriage from the point of view of his wife, later the 'madwoman in the attic'.

The book won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1967, and has grown in reputation ever since, including being named by Time as one of the '100 best English-language novels since 1923. It was included on the 'Big Jubilee Read' list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected in 2022 to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.