Lord Byron's Letters, Wine Bills, and Notes from Mistresses in New Exhibition

Byron: A Life in Motion at the New York Public Library will explore the extraordinary life of Lord Byron, from his youth until death in 1824 at the age of 36, with a focus on the complexity of his character.

Byron was born George Gordon Byron in 1788 in London. After an adventurous youth, Byron found himself suddenly famous with the publication of his first narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The exhibition presents other key moments of his life from his boyhood in Scotland to his death in Greece.

Highlights from the exhibition which runs September 7 through January 12, 2025, include:

• Cantos of Don Juan, Byron’s masterpiece, along with other literary manuscripts
• Letters from his mother and friends, including a letter from Catherine Byron discussing her son’s imperfect foot, and correspondence with Percy and Mary Shelley
• Wine bills from Francis Merryweather, an Englishman in Venice
• Byron’s copy of Richard Cumberland’s Wheel of Fortune in which Byron played the lead in a 1806 amateur production
• a draft of Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice (1820), a verse drama written when Byron and others were advocating for Italian independence
• a collection of notes from mistresses from Byron’s time in Venice

“Byron is a fascinatingly mixed character,” said Elizabeth Denlinger, Curator of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at the New York Public Library. “Despite his well-earned reputation as a party boy and misogynist, he was also a committed writer for whom writing wasn’t the most important thing in life. His ultimate commitment, expressed in joining the Greek war for independence, was to the principles of self-determination and liberty.”