49. William Parry's The Last Days of Lord Byron
Private collection
Frontispiece by Robert Seymour to William Parry's book The Last Days of Lord Byron. Private collectionCaptain William Parry was the ‘Fire-master’ or engineer sent out by the London Greek Committee to organise Byron’s artillery in Missolonghi, and he arrived there on 5 February 1824. Byron described him as ‘a fine rough subject’, and ‘a sort of hardworking Hercules’. Parry and Byron got drunk together frequently, and The Last Days of Lord Byron provides a convincing (though ghost-written) account of Parry’s time in Missolonghi.
The illustrations were drawn to Parry’s descriptions by Robert Seymour, and the frontispiece shows Byron in Missolonghi with his second Newfoundland dog, Lyon. Parry (page 75) describes how ‘With Lyon Byron was accustomed not only to associate, but to commune very much, and very often.’
In this exhibition
- Acknowledgements & foreword
- Introduction
- Introduction
- 1. Manuscript of Byron’s ‘Detached Thoughts’, number 84
- 2. Manuscript copy of Byron’s ‘Detached Thoughts’, annotated by Sir Walter Scott, 1825
- 3. Letter from Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 27 February 1808
- 4. Thomas Medwin's Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron
- 5. John Cam Hobhouse's Journey through Albania
- Britannia: Parliament, party & the Prince
- Introduction to: Britannia: Parliament, party & the Prince
- 6. Byron’s draft parliamentary speech on Roman Catholic emancipation, 1812
- 7. Letter of Lord Sligo to Byron, 20 February 1812
- 8. The Parliamentary Speeches of Lord Byron
- 9. Byron’s manuscript of ‘Note to the annexed stanzas on Brougham’, 7 December 1818
- 10. Letter from Byron to Lady Melbourne, 21 September 1813
- 11. Byron’s ‘Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill,’ Morning Chronicle, 2 March 1812
- 12. Manuscript of Byron’s ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping,’ 1812
- 13. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 22 January 1814
- 14. ‘Song for the Luddites’
- 15. King’s Colledge [sic] to wit: a practical essay
- Napoleon: Emperor, expectation & exile
- Introduction to: Napoleon: Emperor, expectation & exile
- 16. & 17. Byron’s collection of Waterloo spoils (objects and livret)
- 18. Manuscript of Byron’s additional stanzas to ‘Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,’ 1814
- 19. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 10 April 1814
- 20. Don Juan, Canto IX, stanza 4
- 21. Byron’s ‘Ode to Napoleon’ in The Examiner
- 22. Bill for a Napoleonic snuff box, 7 November 1818
- 23. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 4 December 1821
- 24. Manuscript of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III, stanzas 19-21
- 25. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the third. London: John Murray, 1816
- 26. ‘On the Star of “The Legion of Honour” (From the French)’, 1815
- 27. Poems on Napoleon
- 28. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 22 January 1814
- 29. Manuscript of Byron’s ‘From the French,’ stanzas 3-5, in the hand of Augusta Leigh with annotations by Byron, 1815
- Italy: politics, patriotism & plays
- Introduction to: Italy: politics, patriotism & plays
- 30. Marino Faliero, fragmentary proof for the first edition, 1820, corrected by Byron
- 31. & 32. Playbill for a performance of Marino Faliero, 1821, with accompanying letter defending the performance
- 33. Public notice about a performance of Byron’s Doge of Venice, 1821
- 34. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 28-9 September 1820
- 35. & 36. Letters from Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 26 April and 12 October 1821
- 37. The Two Foscari. An historical tragedy
- 38. Notes in Italian, in an unknown hand, used by Byron for Marino Faliero
- 39. ‘Foscari’ by John Rogers Herbert
- 40. Pencil and watercolour sketch of Byron at Genoa, attributed to Count Alfred D’Orsay, April or May 1823
- 41. Byron’s swordstick
- Greece: Hellenism & heroism
- Introduction to: Greece: Hellenism & heroism
- 42. Sculpted portrait bust medallion of Byron in Albanian dress by Nikolaos Kotziamanis, 1992, after Thomas Phillips’ portrait, 1813
- 43. Letter to Byron from the London Greek Committee, 8 March 1823
- 44. Letter of Metropolitan Ignatios to Mavrokordatos, in Greek, introducing Lord Byron, 1823
- 45. Manuscript of ‘On This Day I Complete My Thirty- Sixth Year’, in Byron’s Cephalonia Journal, 1824
- 46. Commission giving Lord Byron charge of a group of artillery signed by Alexandros Mavrokordatos
- 47. 'View of Albanian palikars in pursuit of an enemy'
- 48. Part of a letter or memorandum from Mavrokordatos to Byron, in French, 21 or 22 March 1824
- 49. William Parry's The Last Days of Lord Byron
- 50. Leicester Stanhope's Greece, in 1823 and 1824
- 51. Divers sièges de Missolonghi
- 52. Translation of the funeral oration delivered in Greek by M Spiridon Tricoupi ... in honour of the late Lord Byron
- 53. Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution by Roderick Beaton
- Editions used as sources