Byron's Memoirs

On Lord Byron's death in 1824, Moore, Murray, John Cam Hobhouse, and other friends who were concerned for his reputation gathered together and burned the original manuscript and the only known copy of it, in what has been called the greatest literary crime in history.

Since the Memoirs are lost beyond recovery, only the vaguest idea of their nature can be gathered from the mutually inconsistent testimony of those contemporaries of Byron who read them in manuscript.

On 10 July he wrote from Venice in a letter to his publisher John Murray in London, I think of writing (for your full edition) some memoirs of my life to prefix to them – upon the same model (though far enough I fear from reaching it) as that of Gifford – Hume – &c and this without any intention of making disclosures or remarks upon living people which would be unpleasant to them...I have materials in plenty - but the greater part of these could not be used by me – nor for three hundred years to come – however there is enough without these...to make you a good preface for such an edition as you meditate – but this by the way – I have not made up my mind.

"[3][5] Moore accepted this restriction, and good-humouredly looked forward to bequeathing the book to his son, "who shall astonish the latter days of the nineteenth century with it".

[8] All of them were under the mistaken impression, not having actually consulted the legal documents in the case, that Moore might still have some rights in the matter, whereas in fact Byron's death had rendered the Memoirs the absolute property of John Murray, to deal with as he saw fit.

[19] Some 19th-century commentators believed that one or more copies of the Memoirs still survived and would one day emerge,[20][21] and indeed that hope is still nurtured by a few, but the scholarly consensus is that the book is irrecoverably lost.

Leslie A. Marchand wrote that Hobhouse was chiefly responsible,[29] and Terence de Vere White came to the same conclusion, adding that Murray was the second most guilty man.

[30] G. Wilson Knight brought in a verdict against Hobhouse, Colonel Doyle, Wilmot Horton and Murray as being jointly responsible, with the rider that "behind it all...was Lady Byron".

[36]His friend Thomas Medwin later reported that Byron had told him about the second part that it will prove a good lesson to young men; for it treats of the irregular life I led at one period, and the fatal consequences of dissipation.

[38] Privately, Moore told Hobhouse that "the first part of the Memoirs contained nothing objectionable except one anecdote – namely that Lord B. had Lady B. on the sofa before dinner on the day of their marriage."

"[41] Another detail comes from Samuel Rogers, who claimed to have read in the Memoirs that "on his marriage-night, Byron suddenly started out of his first sleep; a taper, which burned in the room, was casting a ruddy glare through the crimson curtains of the bed; and he could not help exclaiming, in a voice so loud that he wakened Lady B., 'Good God, I am surely in hell!'".

[35] William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, read the manuscript for Murray and reported to him, according to Hobhouse, that "the whole Memoirs were fit only for a brothel and would damn Lord B. to everlasting infamy if published.

Thomas Moore wrote, ostensibly in Venice at the time he received the manuscript from Byron, a poem describing his feelings when about to read the Memoirs.

He reflects, Let me, a moment, think what thousands liveO'er the wide earth this instant, who would giveGladly, whole sleepless nights to bend the brow,Over these precious leaves, as I do now.

[43][44]In July 1824 the journalist Theodore Hook published what purported to be an extract from the Memoirs describing Byron's wedding night.

The first, The Secret Memoirs of Lord Byron by Christopher Nicole (1978), was according to Kirkus Reviews characterized by "erratic wit, hearty research, and excessive palaver about matters sexual".

[51][52] Patt Morrison applauded the book in the Los Angeles Times,[53] but Kirkus Reviews wrote of its "attractive figures in living pasteboard", and would only concede that "as a genre work, this is better than many".