Byron: A Life in Motion

 

September 7, 2023-January 12, 2025

@New York Public Library

Print Gallery, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

 

Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library

Byron: A Life in Motion explores the thrilling and complex life of the poet George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788–1824). The exhibition traces Byron’s movements, from his boyhood and youth in Aberdeen, Nottinghamshire, and Cambridge, to his tour through the Near East and Greece, to the moment in 1813 when he shot to fame with Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and his brief time as a London writer, socialite, and young husband. When his marriage failed, Byron set off again: to Switzerland, for a summer gathering in Geneva that sparked Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; to Venice, where he began work on his masterpiece, Don Juan, and on to Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa with his companion Contessa Teresa Guiccioli, the Shelleys, and other friends. Byron’s final turn was away from poetry toward military action. In 1823 he sailed to Greece to join the national uprising against Turkish rule, but died there in April 1824 of illness and loss of blood before he saw action. Acclaimed a hero in Greece, Byron shook England one last time when his remains traveled through London to the family vault in Nottinghamshire. 

 

The objects in the exhibition, most of which come from the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, include letters to and from Byron, literary manuscripts, books, paintings, prints, and even wine bills that contextualize his complicated existence. A final section glancing at Byron's posthumous fame includes modern responses to the poet and his work.

 

This exhibition is organized by The New York Public Library and curated by Elizabeth Denlinger, Curator of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle.

 

Programs & Events

 

#Byron on the Move with Andrew Stauffer

Fri, Nov 1 | 2–3 PM | Lenox and Astor Room, Room 216, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

Join author and University of Virginia Professor Andrew Stauffer to discuss his new compact biography, Byron: A Life in Ten Letters, and peer into the poet’s life and work through some of his most intimate correspondence.

 

#Byron in the Library Shop

Groups of people in a large space with dark wooden shelves filled with books, tote bags, and accessories.

Curious to read more of Lord Byron’s poetry? Following your visit to the exhibition, you can choose from a selection of books related to his life and works for purchase in the Library Shop on the first floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

 

About the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

Photograph of an empty reading room interior with a wooden table, purple velvet chairs and stacks of books along the walls

The Collection was the creation of the financier Carl H. Pforzheimer (1879-1957), who took a special interest in the lives and works of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his contemporaries, including his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and such friends and fellow writers as Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, Teresa Guiccioli, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, Horace Smith, and Edward John Trelawny. Learn more about this division. 

 

Byron: A Life in Motion

 

In Exhibitions, without whom none of this would be possible, I would like to thank Becky Laughner, Amanda Raquel Dorval, Tereza Chanaki, Carl Auge, Natalie Ortiz, Jake Hamill, Ryan Douglass, Jermaine Neal, Clayton Skidmore, Christopher Alzapeidi, and Henry Ballate;

 

in Digital Imaging Services, Rebecca Wack, Steven Crossot, Doran Walot, Jeanie Pai, Pete Riesett, Emily Hoffman, Jenny Jordan, Marietta Davis, Grattan Perea, and Rebecca Baldwin; 

 

in the Registrar’s Office, Deborah Straussman, Caryn Gedell, and Martin Branch-Shaw; 

 

in Conservation and Collections Care, Ursula Mitra, Emily Müller, Addison Yu, Anna Dyczewska, and Mary Oey;

 

in the Office of Budget and Planning, Margaret Young;

 

in Programming, Aidan Flax-Clark and Margie Cook;

 

in Communications, Charles Arrowsmith, Laurie Beckoff, Sandee Roston, Lizzie Tribone, Katharina Seifert, Rosalene Labrado-Perillo, and Maya Sariahmed;  

 

in Permissions and Metadata, Kiowa Hammons, Zoe Waldron, Dina Selfridge, and Molly O’Brien;

 

in the Library Shop, Krista Rauth, Elana Sinsabaugh, and Lizzy Nahum-Albright;

 

in the Pforzheimer Collection, Charles Carter and Timothy Gress; 

 

in the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg, Barrye Brown; 

 

in the Wallach Division, Deirdre Donohue, Maggie Mustard, Madeleine Viljoen, Margaret Glover, and Alvaro Lazo;

 

in Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books, SASB, Julie Golia; 

 

at the Berg Collection, Carolyn Vega and Julie Carlsen; 

 

the designers, Ivi Diamontopoulos, Jaffer Kolb, and Nashwah Ahmed from New Affiliates, and Courtney Gooch, Clara Angela, and Rory Simms from Portrait. 

 

Outside of the NYPL I’d like to thank, above all, Doucet Devin Fischer for her expert reading of the labels; Mim Harrison for copyediting; former colleagues Declan Kiely and Susan Rabbiner; Lore Segal, Robert Macdonald, Judith Lichtendorf, Marjorie Tesser, Dorotea Mendoza, Bob Perron, Laura Geringer Bass, Martin Hason, George Bear, and Jean Halley; Christopher Edwards; Chris Fletcher; and not least, Joy Ladin.

 

Sponsors

Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos Exhibitions Fund, Jonathan Altman, and Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.