The online version of the Houghton Library exhibition “Let Satire Be My Song”: Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, is now live on the HCL web site. The exhibition is a paratextual excursion through this vitriolic satire in verse, written in part as a response to a hostile review of the poet’s first book, Hours of Idleness. Byron (1788-1824) came to regret much of what he had to say in the poem, and tried unsuccessfully to suppress it. The exhibition features the earliest extant manuscript of the poem (generously lent by the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland) and documents its early publication history with first, early, and counterfeit editions, as well as some curious annotated and extra-illustrated editions. The exhibition also includes many works by “the scribbling crew” – Byron’s contemporaries – drawn from Houghton Library’s extensive collection of British literature.
Byron exhibition now online
