Book contents
- Byron in Context
- Byron in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Abbreviations and Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Part I Life and Works
- Chapter 1 Early Years
- Chapter 2 The Years of Fame
- Chapter 3 Exile
- Chapter 4 Texts and Editions
- Chapter 5 Byron and His Publishers
- Chapter 6 Piracies, Fakes and Forgeries
- Part II Political, Social and Intellectual Transformations
- Part III Literary Cultures
- Part IV Reception and Afterlives
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 6 - Piracies, Fakes and Forgeries
from Part I - Life and Works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2019
- Byron in Context
- Byron in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Abbreviations and Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Part I Life and Works
- Chapter 1 Early Years
- Chapter 2 The Years of Fame
- Chapter 3 Exile
- Chapter 4 Texts and Editions
- Chapter 5 Byron and His Publishers
- Chapter 6 Piracies, Fakes and Forgeries
- Part II Political, Social and Intellectual Transformations
- Part III Literary Cultures
- Part IV Reception and Afterlives
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
People attempted to benefit from Lord Byron’s popularity while investing as little of their money as possible, and so they appropriated his writings or his name. Some of the resulting works were piracies, involving the publication of a composition without the copyright-owner’s permission, such as the one-shilling edition of Byron’s Beppo that William Dugdale published in 1823. Others were fakes, published works that misrepresented themselves (whether dishonestly or negligently) as being written by Byron, such as Reflections on Shipboard “by Lord Byron,” published in 1816 by R. S. Kirby and W. Allason. Others again were forgeries, material artifacts crafted or altered so that they appear to have been created by Byron, such as the supposed Byron letters fabricated by “Major George Gordon De Luna Byron” in the mid-nineteenth century. Both Jerome J. McGann’s Complete Poetical Works and Leslie Marchand’s Byron’s Letters and Journals include lists of dubia and apocrypha intended to repair the confusion created by fakes and forgeries. Piracies, fakes and forgeries are not just things to be weeded out, however, but are cultural works whose histories can be significant and illuminating.
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- Byron in Context , pp. 53 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019