Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to John Murray, 11 April 1814
“I enclose you a letteret from
Mrs. Leigh.
“It will be best not to put my name to our Ode; but you may
say as openly as you like that it is mine, and I can inscribe
it to Mr. Hobhouse, from the author, which will mark it sufficiently. After the resolution of not
publishing, though it is a thing of little length and less consequence, it will be
better altogether that it is anonymous; but we will incorporate it in the first tome of ours that you find time or the wish to publish.
“Yours alway,
“B.
“P.S. I hope you got a note of alterations, sent this
matin?
“P.S. Oh my books! my books! will you never find my
books?
“Alter ‘potent spell’
to ‘quickening spell:’ the first (as Polonius says) ‘is a vile phrase,’
and means nothing, besides being commonplace and Rosa-Matildaish.”
Charlotte Dacre [née King] [Rosa Matilda] (1782 c.-1825)
English poetess, daughter of the radical writer John King; she published in the
Morning Post and
Morning Herald under the
name “Rosa Matilda.” In 1815 she married Nicholas Byrne, owner and editor of the
Morning Post.
John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published
Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as
Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).
Hon. Augusta Mary Leigh [née Byron] (1783-1851)
Byron's half-sister; the daughter of Amelia Darcy, Baroness Conyers, she married
Lieutenant-Colonel George Leigh on 17 August 1807.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
