LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2006 October Grand Format Autographs #629  / 

25886

Two THOMAS MOORE Letters About BYRON

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:100.00 USD Estimated At:400.00 - 600.00 USD
Two THOMAS MOORE Letters About BYRON
<B>Poet Thomas Moore Seeks Poet Byron's Letters!</B></I> Two Autograph Letters Signed, both tipped to stiff folio sheets, as follows. <B>1).</B></I> ALS, one page, 7.5" x 9", Stoperton Cottage, Devizes, December 21, 1827: about 220 words in all. To Byron's lifelong friend, the Rev. Henry Drury, at Harrow. With integral address leaf. Very fine. <B>2).</B></I> ALS, one page, 7.25" x 9", Richmond Hill, July 14, 1829: about 60 words. To an unnamed correspondent. Very fine. Accompanied by a steel engraving of Moore (London, 1827). Thomas Moore was first Byron's influence, then his friend, and finally his literary executor. It is in this last connection that Moore is controversial- and that concerns us here. Generally blamed for destroying Byron's memoirs, which had been bequeathed him at the poet's death, some scholars insist that far from wanting to obliterate Byron's shocking recollections, Moore actually tried to prevent the burning of the poet's papers, - even reaching into the fire to grab what he could. At hand here are two letters, both about Byron, which show Moore in hot pursuit of Byron's letters, and running to ground anyone who knew him with whom he might speak. Moore's purpose? His classic biography, <I>The Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,</B></I> was in the works... <BR><BR>From the first letter, in part: "<I>I take advantage of a frank to send you a hasty acknowledgement of the very interesting letters of Byron's you lent me [Byron wrote to Drury about, among other things, his same-sex adventures]...There is, however, I am glad to say, some chances of our friend Hodgson [Francis Hodgson, Byron's intimate friend] opening his treasures to see, and I know he received some letters from Byron [in which Byron wrote frankly of his sexual life] during his first travels...</B></I>" <BR><BR>From the second letter, in part: "<I>I mean to take the first opportunity of calling upon you, no less for thepleasure of shaking you by the hand, than for the advantage of a little conversation with you on the subject of Lord Byron."</B></I>
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