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Creator
Byron, Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron, Baroness, 1792-1860
Call number
Pforz MS
Physical description
136 items
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Anne Isabella Byron, Lady Byron manuscript material, Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, The New York Public Library
Repository
Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
Access to materials
Restricted access. Request an in-person research appointment.

Anne Isabella Noel Byron, Lady Byron was the wife of English poet Lord Byron. The collection consists primarily of correspondence dating between 1813 and 1860. It also includes several pieces of prose and poetry.

Biographical/historical information

Anne Isabella Noel Byron, Lady Byron, wife of the English poet Lord Byron. In the years following their separation and his death, she dedicated herself to philanthropic causes, with a special interest in education of the poor.

Scope and arrangement

The Anne Isabella Byron, Lady Byron manuscript material in the Pforzheimer Collection consists of writings and correspondence. The writings include two commonplace books from her youth, notes she kept in a printed journal, and two short essays. The bulk of the correspondence is from between 1835 and 1855 and discusses her personal life, her ideas on education and penal reform, and her philanthropy. Correspondents include: Joanna Baillie, playwright and poet; Fanny Kemble, actress and author; John Murray, publisher; Harriet Beecher Stowe, author; and more than forty others.

The Anne Isabella Byron, Lady Byron manuscript material is arranged in two series:

Administrative information

Custodial history

The first piece of Lady Byron manuscript material added to the Pforzheimer Collection was a single letter, offered together with a Lord Byron letter, through a 1961 Parke-Bernet auction. Two of Lady Byron's commonplace books, copies of some of her early letters in an unknown hand, and a journal containing some of her notes came to the Collection in 1976 with the purchase of the papers and library of Byron scholar Leslie Marchand. The rest of the materials, nearly all correspondence, were purchased individually, from various autograph dealers. Because the Pforzheimer Collection collects actively, its holdings in Lady Byron manuscript material may grow in the future as items become available for purchase.

Processing information

Finding aid created by Charles Cuykendall Carter in 2019. Revised and imported into ArchivesSpace by Timothy Gress, May 2025.

Related Material

In addition to manuscript material created by Lady Byron, the Pforzheimer Collection holds a sizable amount of Lord Byron's holograph correspondence and a few of his literary manuscripts. Among these is a draft of his poem "Fare Thee Well!", addressed to Lady Byron upon their separation. Also held is a sixteen-line manuscript poem in an unidentified contemporary hand [watermark 1814] on Lady Byron's marriage to Lord Byron (B'ANA 0491). The poem begins: "Fair Milbanke won by Byron's dulcet strains / Judg'd of his Lordship's virtues by his brains ...."

Lady Byron-related graphic materials held by the Collection include two stipple-engraved portraits: one by R. Page (circa 1816), and two after a painting by W.J. Newton: one engraved by R. Soper, and one by W.H. More.

Additional Lady Byron manuscript material at the New York Public Library can be found in the Manuscripts and Archives Division, and in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.

Key terms

Names

Using the collection

Location

Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Third Floor, Room 319

Access to materials

Restricted access. Request an in-person research appointment.