Byron's Gothic Readings

But still the shade remain'd: the blue eyes glared,
And rather variably for stony death;
Yet one thing rather good the grave had spared,
The ghost had a remarkably sweet breath.
A straggling curl show'd he had been fair-hair'd;
A red lip, with two rows of pearls beneath
Gleam'd forth, as through the casement's ivy shroud
The moon peep'd, just escaped from a grey cloud.
                             Don Juan XVI. 1017-1024

 

 

 

 

 

 
  • Beckford, William. Vatek (1787).

"There thou too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,
Once form'd thy Paradise, as not unaware
When wanton wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,
Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun."
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. I. XXII.

"Vathek was one of the tales I had a very early admiration of. For correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination, it far surpasses all European imitations, and bears such marks of originality, that those who have visited the east will find some difficulty in believing it to be more than a translation. As an eastern tale, even Rasselas must bow before it: his 'happy valley' will not bear comparison with the 'Hall of Eblis.'"
Byron's note to line 1328 of The Giaour.

Letter to Samuel Rogers, 3 March 1818: "Your account of your visit to Fonthill is very striking: could you beg of him for me a copy in MS. of the remaining Tales? I think I deserve them, as a strenuous and public admirer of the first one. . . . If ever I should return to England, I should like very much to see the author, with his permission. . . . I have a French copy of Vathek which I bought at Lausanne. I can read French with great pleasure and facility, though I neither speak nor write it."

  • Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Christabel" (1798). Letter to Coleridge 18 Oct. 1815, after hearing Scott's recital of the beginning of "Christabel": "I do not know that even 'Love' or the 'Antient Mariner' are so impressive--and to me there are few things in our tongue beyond these two productions." See Marchand (543) for Byron's concern that he might have plaigarized lines from "Christabel" in his "Seige of Corinth."
  • Godwin, William. Caleb Williams (1794). In an argument with his wife (of uncertain date), Byron threatened to "be another Falkland to you" (Collected Conversations, ed. Lovell. 103).

---St. Leon (1799). During a conversation with the aging Godwin, Byron entreats him for another novel, but Godwin claims the writing of another would kill him, to which Byron responded, "And what matter? We should have another St. Leon." (Marshall, William Godwin. 209.)

  • Lamb, Lady Caroline. Glenarvon (1816). Letter to Moore 17 Nov. 1816: "It seems to me, that if the authoress had written the truth, and nothing but the truth--the whole truth--the romance would not only have been more romantic but more entertaining. As for the likeness, the picture can't be good--I did not sit long enough." I've found no evidence that Byron read Lamb's equally gothicky Ada Reis (1823).
  • Lewis, Matthew Gregory. The Monk (1796). (?)Castle Spectre (1799). Tales of Wonder (1800-01). (?)Alfonso, King of Castile. A Tragedy (1801). Byron’s well-known satiric portrait of Lewis in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" includes reference to Lewis’s elemental-spirit poems from The Tales of Wonder (noted by number below) and is more directed at Lewis's collection of gothic ballads than his more remembered work today, The Monk:


"Oh! wonder-working Lewis! monk, or bard,
Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou!
Whether on ancient tombs thou taks't thy stand,
By gibb'ring spectres hail'd, thy kindred band;
Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page,
To please the females of our modest age;
All hail, M.P.! from whose infernal brain
Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
At whose command "grim women" [Wonder #18] throng in crowds,
And kings of fire [#12], of water [#11], and of clouds [#13],
With "small gray men" [#19],  "wild yagers" [#23], and what not,
To crown with honor thee and Walter Scott;
Again all hail! if tales like thine may please
St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease;
Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell."

from "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" (1809)

As usual, Byron’s satire know its subject well.   One of Scott's contributions to the Tales of Wonder, “The Wild Hunstman,” is a translation of Bürger’s “Die Wilde Jäger.” "The Small Grey Man" is the contribution of Henry Bunbury to Lewis's miscellany.  The rest of the poems to which Byron alludes are by Lewis.
 

" . . . I looked yesterday at the worst parts of the Monk. These descriptions ought to have been written by Tiberius at Caprea--they are forced--the philtered ideas of a jaded voluptuary. It is inconceivable to me how they could have been composed by a man of only twenty--his age when he wrote them. They have no nature--all the sour cream of cantharides. I should have suspected Buffon of writing them on the deathbed of his detestable dotage. I had never read this edition and merely looked at them from curiosity and recollection of the noise they made, and the name they have left to Lewis. But they could do no harm, except ****." Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. Marchand. Journal entry 6 Dec. 1813 (Vol. 3. 234)

  • Moore, John. Zeluco (1789). "The outline which I once meant to fill up for him [Harold] was, with some exceptions, the sketch of a modern Timon, perhaps a poetical Zeluco." Final sentence of "Preface" to the First and Second Cantoes of Childe Harold.

 

  • Maturin, Charles Robert. Bertram (1816). In a letter to Maturin dated 22 December 1815, Byron praised Bertram, calling it "a very extraordinary production--of great and singular merit as a composition."

---. Manuel. Letter to Murray, 21 August 1817. In Byron's anything but "civil and delicate declension" on Polidori's tragedy, Byron alludes to the failure of Maturin's next play: "I had a heavy loss by 'Manuel"-- / Too lucky if it prove not annual."

  • Peacock, Thomas Love. Melincourt (1817). Shelley reports to Peacock in a conversation on 10 August 1821 that Byron is a "great admirer" of Melincourt.

 

  • Polidori, John. The Vampyre (1819). As is well known, Byron's prose fragment served as the genesis of Polidori's tale. He wrote to the Editor of Galignani's Messenger wittily disclaiming his authorship of the tale: "If the book is clever, it would be base to deprive the real writer, whoever he may be, of the honors, and if stupid, I desire the responsibility of nobody's dullness but my own . . . . I have besides a personal dislike to 'Vampires,' and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to divulge their secrets (27 April 1819).

See also letter to Murray, 25 May 1819: "A few days ago I sent you all I know of Polidori's vampire;--he may do, say, or write what he pleases--but I wish he would not attribute to me his own compositions;--if he has anything of mine in his possession the MS. will put it beyond Controversy--but I scarcely think that anyone who knows me would believe the thing in the Magazine to be mine--even if they saw it in my own hieroglyphics."

  • Radcliffe, Ann. See Thorslev's still useful discussion in The Byronic Hero (1962), in which he argues that Radcliffean villain-heroes like Montoni and Schedoni served as prototypes for the Byronic hero. Byron's references to Radcliffe (listed below) signify an easy acquaintance with Radcliffe's works but don't mention specific titles. Good bets: The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. A Highland Story (1793); Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); Romance of the Forest (1792); A Sicilian Romance (1790); The Italian (1797).


"I loved her [Venice] from my boyhood; she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water columns from the sea,
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,
Had stamped her image in me . . ." Childe Harold's Pilgrimage IV. 154-60.

Letter to Augusta Leigh, 19 Dec. 1816: "I am going out this evening--in my cloak & Gondola--there are two nice Mrs. Radcliffe words for you."

  • (?)Schiller von, Frederich. Die Rauber and Die Geisterseher.

 

  • Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein Letter to Murray, 15 May 1819: "Mary Godwin (now Mrs. Shelley) wrote 'Frankenstein'--which you have reviewed thinking it Shelley's--methinks it is a wonderful work for a Girl of nineteen--not nineteen indeed--at that time."

 

  • Shelley, Percy Bysshe. (?) Zastrozzi; A Romance (1810) and (?)St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian (1811). No specific evidence exists that Byron read Shelley's juvenile gothics, but given his intimate knowledge of Shelley's work, the attribution seems plausible.

 

  • Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto (1765); The Mysterious Mother (1768).


"It is the fashion to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly because he was a nobleman, and secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable letters, and of the Castle of Otranto, he is the "Ultimus Romanorum," the author of the Mysterious Mother, a tragedy of the highest order and not a puling love-play. He is the father of the first romance and of the last tragedy in our language, and surely worthy of a higher place than any living writer, be he who he may." "Preface" to Marino Faliero.