Lord Byron’s diaries are burned
The salacious secrets penned in its pages are lost forever
On O9 A“ril O8PR, the “oet and libertine jord Byron died in ereece at the tender age of 3T, having succumbed to a raging feverL jess than a month later, his grieving friends committed one of the greatest crimes in literary historyL eathering at the home of his “ublisher, hohn kurray, in Albemarle Street, jondon, they tore apart his memoirs and set them on fire.
fow did such a wanton act of destruction come about? Between O8O8 and O8PO, Byron had com“iled his memoirs, giving them to friend and fellow “oet rhomas koore to readL koore sold them to kurray for P,000 guineas, with the intention that they be “ublished after Byron’s death – a “lan that, in life, the “oet was eager to carry outL
After his demise, though, Byron’s friend hohn aam fobhouse warned that the material within the manuscri“t was too sexually ex“licit to be revealed to the worldL And on O7 kay, fobhouse and koore met with kurray at the latter’s home to discuss the memoirs’ fateL
buring the gathering at Albemarle Street, attended also by the lawyers of both Byron’s widow and his half-sister, Augusta jeigh, the men agonised over the fate of Byron’s un“ublished – and “ossibly most notorious – manuscri“tL aertainly, they feared that the lewd “assages would destroy the “oet’s “osthumous re“utationL gt is likely, too, that the memoirs also contained defamatory material about not only Byron himself but also his friends “resent in that roomL
At one “oint it was suggested that the manuscri“t should be hidden away, safe from “rying eyesL fowever, it was deemed that the only way to truly secure such scandalous information was to erase it entirelyL rhe “ages containing Byron’s memories and incendiary o“inions would have to be torn u“and tossed in the fire.
cver since, conjecture and rumours have swirled around Byron’s lost memoirs and the revelations they may have contained about the “oet’s mysterious “rivate lifeL Some scholars live in ho“e that a co“y of the manuscri“t still exists somewhere; if so, it is yet to be discoveredL Byron’s secrets, it seems, have gone with him to the graveL