3 - “My brain is feminine”: Byron and the poetry of deception

Summary

I begin with a mouldy anecdote, a late supplement to that once-flourishing industry – now part of the imagination's rust belt – called “Curiosities of Literature.”

In 1894 a short article appeared in Notes and Queries under the heading “Byroniana.” Its subject was a poem entitled “The Mountain Violet” which the author of the article, Henry Wake, attributed to Byron. The case for authenticity was argued on two counts, one archival and one stylistic. The archival argument observed that the poem was printed in an anthology of verse collected by one Charles Snart under the title A Selection of Poems, published in Newark in two volumes in 1807–1808. Wake said that he was in possession of a set of Snart's edition with “Mrs. Byron” written in pencil in her hand on the front flyleaf, and with the following notation on the end flyleaf of Volume II: “66 from Nottingham Journal.” The latter was a reference to “The Mountain Violet,” which was printed on page 66 of Vol. II. The poem, it turns out, was in fact first printed in the Nottingham Journal on 9 April 1803. Neither printing attributes authorship, but according to Wake the pencil notation at the end of Snart's book is in Byron's hand.

Wake went on to argue that the poem's style showed remarkable congruities with the style of Byron's early verse. Such matters are difficult to decide, of course, especially when one is dealing with juvenilia.