Tributes

The IABS is sad to announce the passing of an esteemed Greek Romanticist, gifted poet and beloved teacher, Dr. Argyros Protopapas (1952-2023).

Argyros was a member of the Messolonghi Byron Society and participated in many international Byron conferences over the years. An astute critic of Shelley, Argyros will be remembered for his erudition, humour, love for philosophy and passion for poetry. 

Dr Argyros Protopapas studied and taught English at the Universities of Athens and Southampton, UK. A published poet and once a candidate physician, Argyros did extensive research on the mutual effect of physical rhythms and mental functions in the process of poetry composition as reflected on Shelley’s poetic language, sponsored by the British Academy and the University of Southampton––initially jointly supported academically by the Royal South Hants Hospital. He published extensively on Shelley’s poetry, while his monograph Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Poetic Science: His Visionary Enterprise and the Crisis of Self-Consciousness (2012) earned critical acclaim. A former graduate of the School of Law and Economics at Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki (1978), Argyros also worked for the Vice-Consulate of Greece in Southampton for several years and held national and EU posts in education.  

Prof. Frederick Burwick passed away on the morning of March 16, one day before his 86th birthday. He touched many lives with his depth of his knowledge on writers ranging from Coleridge, Byron, Wordsworth, and Blake, but he was never too busy to offer a helping hand to students, to write cheerful posts during the Pandemic, and to mentor colleagues who benefited from his warmth, spirit, and encouragement. He will be greatly missed.

Fred gave a keynote lecture at the superbly organized IABS conference in Gdansk, Poland, which appears in Byron: Reality, Fiction and Madness, edited by Miroslawa Modrzewska and Maria Fengler. A recent lecture on Byron's "Manfred" can be found here: https://romantic-circles.org/praxis/manfred/praxis.2019.manfred.burwick.html

Christopher Flynn, a student who knew him well, wrote: "He was one of my mentors at UCLA, and helped me throughout my career. He wrote letters for me for promotion and tenure, and I was fortunate to keep seeing him at conferences. Fred was addicted to conferences. I saw him most recently at the Romanticism Association conferences in Strasbourg in 2017, and in Aviemore, Scotland, in 2018. In Aviemore he very kindly helped me with a sadly recycled paper and showed me how to make more of it. He remembered it from when I was his student at UCLA, more than 15 years earlier. He was still helping me think and think better years after I was his student. He was the only professor at UCLA who I took more than one class with, and the work he helped me do in one of those led to my first published article. I remember a fun lunch with him in Strasbourg. We bought feeble sandwiches from a shop near the conference site and sat eating them on a bench, talking over ideas and plans. And we had wonderful conversations in Scotland. He never stopped caring about his students."

Prof. Fred Burwick, a member of the Advisory Board of the IABS, has always been the very embodiment of scholarly community. A Research Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Prof. Burwick is author and editor of thirty-three books and one hundred fifty-three essays. He is editor of the Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria: Text and Meaning (1989) and The Oxford Handbook of Coleridge (2009). Recent monographs include Romanticism: Keywords (2015), British Pirates in Print and Performance (2015), and British Drama of the Industrial Revolution (2015). He has been named Distinguished Scholar by the British Academy (1992) and by the Keats-Shelley Association (1998). The International Conference on Romanticism has presented him with their Lifetime Achievement Award (2013).After completing his doctoral studies in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1965, Frederick Burwick returned to his native Los Angeles to take a teaching position at UCLA. Although he has since continued as a member of the UCLA faculty, he has enjoyed several visiting positions in Germany at the universities of Würzburg, Siegen, Göttingen, and Bamberg. At Göttingen he spent two years (1992-1994) as the Director of the UC Education Abroad Program. He has also lectured at the universities of Cologne, Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Munich in Germany as well as Oxford and Cambridge in England. He has been named Distinguished Scholar by both the British Academy (1992) and the Keats-Shelley Association (1998). His book on Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination (Penn State, 1996) won the Outstanding Book of the Year Award of the American Conference on Romanticism. He is also recipient of the Dickson Emeritus Award (2009) for outstanding achievement, and has been awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Emeritus Fellowship (2011-2012).

Other works include: The Damnation of Newton: Goethe’s Color Theory and Romantic Perception. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1986. The Haunted Eye: Perception and the Grotesque in English and German Romanticism. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1987. Charles Brockden Brown, Arthur Mervyn, oder Die Pest in Philadelphia. Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Jahre 1793. Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Mimesis and its Romantic Reflections, Penn State University Press, 2001. The Works of Thomas De Quincey, vol. 3. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000. Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Playing to the Crowd: London Popular Theatre, 1780-1830. Encyclopedia of Romanticism, 3 vols. General Editor Frederick Burwick, Associate Editors Nancy Goslee and Diane Hoeveler. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012. British Pirates in Print and Performance, with Manushag Powell. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Romanticism: Keywords. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. British Drama of the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. A History of Romantic Literature. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019.

Michael Rees (Brother Teilo) was joint chairman (with Ian Scott-Kilvert) of the The Byron Society from May 1975 until the close of 1978, succeeding the late Dennis Walwin Jones.  He also served as the first secretary, later joint chair, of the International Byron Society, encouraging the development of many of the international societies and organizing a number of the early international tours, including Scotland and Greece in 1976,

Portugal and Spain in 1977, and Italy in 1978, among others.  A gifted linguist, he sometimes served as an unofficial interpreter on the tours. He translated Teresa Guiccioli’s Vie de Lord Byron en Italie (University of Delaware Press, 2005), which was edited by Peter Cochran.  A dedicated collector of Byron books in many languages, as well as Byronic portraits and memorabilia, he generously donated his entire remarkable collection to  help launch the Byron Society Collection as he was preparing to enter the abbey at Caldey Island. A very kind person, Michael was a peacemaker; every person that he met was important to him.  His impact on the International Byron Society remains immeasurable.

The French Byron Society is sad to announce that Christiane Vigouroux passed away on 1st Oct 2020.

She chaired our society between 2000 and 2008, eight years during which she organised two or three meetings a year, invited guest speakers – among whom the late Peter Cochran – and hosted the 2006 International Byron Conference at the Sorbonne University.

All along her terms as chair and several years after, she faithfully attended the Byron Conferences, be it in Europe, in Japan or in North America. She gave our society’s bulletin a new format, which is currently still in use, and opened it to the contributions of many scholars across the world.

We will all remember her dedication to create friendly links with other Byron societies.

Romanticists all over the world will be dismayed to learn that Rolf Peter Lessenich passed away suddenly in early February 2019.

Although he was approaching 80, he was still an indefatigable and prolific writer on a wide range of comparative literature, from the Classical tradition of Dryden and Pope to Romanticism and late Victorian decadence.

His well-meaning, erudite and ever-supportive voice will be sorely missed by his students, colleagues, friends and all those who had the privilege of being taught by him. And even if “poetry makes nothing happen,” as Auden was to write in his lament for Yeats’s death, Rolf Lessenich’s lectures, essays and books about literature have amply contributed to the knowledge, education and happiness of his ever-grateful students and friends.

Attached please find Norbert Lennartz's obituary.

The IABS is sad to announce the passing of a renowned poet, critic and Shelley scholar Michael O’Neill, who helped lead the International Association of Byron Societies for many years.

In addition to serving as chair of the Elma Dangerfield Prize for many years, Michael helped organize meetings for the IABS in London, Tbilisi, Beirut, Athens/Messolonghi, and, most recently, Paris, where he chaired sessions and gave a typically moving and inspirational lecture.

Michael had the ability to bring people together. His exchanges with Bernard Beatty and Timothy Webb in Paris stand out in my mind, as do his comments on transatlantic travel, and his spontaneous recitation of scraps of poetry in Parisian cafes. After one session in Paris, Michael quoted a line from John Berryman, then another from Percy Shelley, relishing their gifts with the authority and appreciation of a poet.

I remember him crossing a bridge in London, intently discussing a book project with Madeleine Callaghan. I remember him walking back alone from a session at the Paris conference, organized so well by Olivier Feignier, because he needed to make a call to his family. Tall, elegant, and soft-voiced, Michael could light up a road with his conversation, as he did on one occasion in Messolonghi, when several people were walking back to the Theoxenia Hotel on a dimly lit road after a Byron session. He was generous to other scholars, asking questions to panelists who did not receive one, and offering insights and suggestions that raised the level of the conversation. When Sarah Wootton won the Elma Dangerfield book prize, he looked up from a pile of papers and said, “do call her, she’ll be so happy to hear the news.” He advocated for the inclusion of younger scholars at conferences, noting, with an impish smile, that “they have so much more to say than we do.”

Michael may have been a poet at heart, but he also knew how to run a meeting. I watched with admiration for 3-4 years as he brought people together so we could arrange our conferences in Beirut, Tbilisi, Gdansk, Paris, and Ravenna. He set a standard for decency, humility, and professionalism, recusing himself from committees where he knew a member’s books, and earning the admiration of everyone with whom he came into contact. I remember him as a Shelley scholar about whom Donald Reiman said, “he’s the best critic on Shelley writing today.” And that was more than twenty years ago.

His stature and reputation have only grown, as his most recent award by the Keats-Shelley Association in Chicago (2019) has shown. He was a humanist in the best sense of the word, a deeply valued and admired friend of Byron and all Byronists, and will be missed around the world. The officers and members of the IABS are deeply saddened by his passing and grateful for his selfless service to the Association.

Professor Jonathan Gross, Joint President of the International Association of Byron Societies

"We Live the Lives We Lead Because of the Thoughts We Think" by Michael ... https://youtu.be/ng---HrFLIo thanks for this great recording @Shelley_at_224

The International Association of Byron Societies (IABS) is very saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Emirates Marios Byron Raizis.

A graduate of Purdue University (M.Sc.) and of New York University (Ph.D.), Professor Marios-Byron Raizis joined the Faculty of English Studies at the University of Athens in 1978 and attained the status of Full Professor of English Literature and the ex-officio Head of the Faculty. His research and publications focused primarily on the area of English Metaphysical and Romantic poetry, as well as in comparative literary studies of Greek and English letters; he has also studied and translated modern Greek poetry into English. A distinguished Byron scholar, M. B. Raizis was President of the Hellenic Byron Society since 1988. And during the last decade he was completely devoted to The Messolonghi Byron Society, as Director of Studies.

A former International President of the International Byron Society (IBS) for many years, he was professor of English at the University of Athens, where he taught since 1978. Before that, he was professor of English and comparative literature at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. A frequent contributor to scholarly journals, he was also known as a translator from Greek into English and English into Greek.

His works include: Dionysios Solomos; Greek Revolution and the American Muse: A Collection of Philhellenic Poetry, 1821–1828; The Metaphysical Poets of England, and The Poetic Manner of George Seferis (1977) among many others. Prof. Raizis attended international conferences with regularity, contributing his expertise on Marko Botsaris, the legend of Prometheus, and Byron’s involvement in the Greek War of Independence.

During the International Student Byron Conferences, Messolonghi, he is well remembered for his impromptu lectures and spot translations on Greek history in the Garden of Heroes in Messolonghi, Ithaca, and other locations. Students remember him as a painstaking editor of their own work in proceedings from the conferences.

He chaired many panels and led discussions, most recently in Venice, Italy, and created an atmosphere of conviviality and mutual respect between all conference participants. With typical generosity, Prof. Raizis compiled invaluable collections of verse about Greek history and literature, such as Angelica Palli’s “To Byron” (1824) compiled for the Messolonghi society (View here)

He also edited Byron: A Poet for All Seasons - 25th International Byron Conference and Tour 1-8 September 1999, Athens - Messolonghi - Jannina – Zitsa; and Lord Byron: Byronism, Liberalism, Philhellenism; Proceedings of the 14th International Byron Symposium, Athens, 6-8 July 1987, which have been useful to so many scholars. 

He will be sorely missed and remembered the world over for his vivacious personality, his scholarly contributions, his services for the IABS, his personal warmth, and his formidable reading in Greek and American literature.

Prof. Raizis’s legacy will live beyond his departure.

With deep sorrow we announce the death of Charles E. Robinson, admired and loved by his many students and by scholars of Byron and Romanticism worldwide, on November 20, 2016.

A graduate of Mount Saint Mary’s College in Maryland, Charlie earned his Ph.D. from Temple University under the guidance of the great David V. Erdman. In 1965, Charlie joined the English Department at the University of Delaware, where he remained for his entire career and where, after 1990, he was joined by the influential Shelley editor Donald H. Reiman. At Delaware, Charlie served as Director of Graduate Studies in English from 1981 to 1993. He also served for two decades on the editorial board for the University of Delaware Press.

As a scholar, Charlie was deeply dedicated to Byron studies. His first presentation at the Denver MLA in 1969 focused on Byron’s The Deformed Transformed, a paper later incorporated into his first book, Byron and Shelley: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight (Johns Hopkins, 1976). The fruits of vast reading, thorough archival research, and lively collaboration with colleagues, Charlie’s scholarship hugely expanded our knowledge of the Byron-Shelley circle. Building on his Mary Shelley Reader (edited with Betty T. Bennett; Oxford, 1990), Charlie transformed Mary Shelley scholarship with his Frankenstein Notebooks (Garland, 1996), an edition recently reissued by Routledge. Charlie also co-edited Liberty and Poetic License: New Essays on Byron (with Bernard Beatty and Tony Howe; Liverpool, 2008) and published The Original Frankenstein (Random House, 2009). At his death, Charlie was preparing a new edition of Hazlitt’s letters and a biography of Shelley’s publisher, Charles Ollier. Early, late, completed, and unfinished—these works reflect the wit, acuteness, and effervescence that Charlie himself embodied.

Charlie’s service to the Byron Society was long and enthusiastic. From promoting the fledgling Byron Society in the early 1970s to hosting the Leslie A. Marchand Lecture Series at Delaware in the 2000s, Charlie dedicated enormous energy to all things Byron. He organized two international Byron conferences at Delaware, the first in 1979 on “Lord Byron and His Contemporaries” and the second in 2001 on “Byron: Heritage and Legacy.” From 1996 to 2006 Charlie served as Executive Director of the Byron Society of America and co-chair of The Byron Society Collection, originally at the University of Delaware. In 2015, Charlie himself delivered the annual Marchand Lecture, speaking on the relationship of Byron and Hazlitt. Elected as Joint Treasurer of the International Association of Byron Societies in 1976, he remained on the International Byron Society board until his death. Attendees at Byron conferences in London, Athens, New York, and Moncton among other places will fondly recall Charlie’s lectures, in which his many jokes, digressions, and gesticulations entertained while his insights enlightened.

In addition to his scholarly endeavors, Charlie was a generous mentor and inspiring teacher. His graduate students, many of whom are now scholars in Romantic studies, will remember well Charlie’s office, crowded with books and redolent with the aroma of coffee; his profound and sometimes profoundly unreadable comments on dissertation chapters; and his winking confession that the grade on seminar papers sometimes depended on how many glasses of wine he’d had when reading them. Like the anxious students he initiated into the profession, whose fears he allayed and to whose job searches and cover letters he devoted weeks or months of his life, Charlie apparently never slept. His middle-of-the-night emails of encouragement or early-morning forwards of job advertisements from the Chronicle of Higher Education live in the lore of the Delaware English Department and in the memories of his grateful students. In honor of his kind and indefatigable mentoring, Charlie in 2005 received an Outstanding Advising and Mentoring Award from the University of Delaware. Charlie’s classroom exploits were no less legendary. As Marsha Manns, founder of the BSA and one of Charlie’s undergraduate students at Delaware, recalls, “Every class was an adventure, crammed full of passion and excitement; students eagerly arrived in advance of the 8:30 AM start time and lingered long after the class was over to talk with Charlie. His own enthusiasms for our poets and for his students completely filled the classroom with anticipation.” All of Charlie’s students report similar experiences, though each anecdote is unique. To collect the stories of Charlie’s humor and humanity would require a very long volume.

Charlie leaves behind his wife, Nanette, who was his traveling companion on many Byron-related conferences and adventures, his son John, and his daughter Clare. Charlie will be remembered for his Catholic faith, his service to the community of Arden, his lessons on poetry and meter for high school students in Wilmington, Delaware, and his wry replies to detractors of his beloved West Virginia, both the state and the Mountaineer basketball team. His family, friends, and students will miss his generosity, energy, and passionate inquiries relating to Byron, Mary Shelley, and beyond.

Michael Edson

With deep sadness we announce the recent death of Joseph Byron Yount III, familiarly known to Byronists worldwide as J. B., on October 2, 2016.

Over a quarter of a century ago J. B., always interested in the poet whose name he shared, contacted Jerome McGann with a scholarly question. “There’s a Byron Society, and you should join it,” Jerry advised.  J. B. joined, and for decades he enriched Byronworld with his distinctive presence. J. B. attended international Byron conferences in Nottingham, Prague, Venice, Boston/New York/ Newark DE, St. Andrews, and Versailles.

He served as President of the Byron Society of America, where his legal counsel proved invaluable as the BSA moved its collection of books and other Byroniana to its present home at Drew University. J. B. entertained and edified many Byronists who visited him over more than two decades. His hospitality was lavish, his knowledge of Virginia history extensive, and his smoothly guided tour of Jeffersonian Virginia ranging from Charlottesville to Monticello, Barboursville, Montpelier, Ash Lawn, and Poplar Forest, unforgettable.

J. B. was the proud descendant of two old Shenandoah Valley families and a lifelong resident of Waynesboro Virginia.  He was a partner in the Edmunds, Willets, Yount and Hicks law firm and was the second-youngest mayor in Waynesboro’s history. For 25 years he served as Waynesboro’s city attorney, acting also as city planner for much of that time. Well-known as a local historian and lecturer, JB was a pillar of many institutions besides the BSA, among them the Augusta County Historical Society, the Augusta County Bar Association, Fishburne Military School, and the University of Science and Philosophy established at nearby Swannanoa by Walter and Lao Russell. He was a faithful Presbyterian, a staunch Mason, and a fervent Wahoo, a life member of the Waynesboro NAACP and a 60-year member of Farmington Country Club outside Charlottesville. J. B. was a reader, a collector, and a superb raconteur (to experience his mellifluous cadences, read a few paragraphs of Remembered for Love, his biography of Lao Russell), a Virginia gentleman and a citizen of the world—and, like Byron, a profound, amused student of human nature in all its complexity.  As Marsha Manns, founder of the BSA, fondly recalls, J. B.  “could see through anything--could politic intensely to accomplish a good end and yet have everyone think the world of him. He accomplished more in one lifetime than seems possible and yet he never wearied.”

 J. B.’s many friends, in Byron circles and beyond, will miss his warmth, wisdom, generosity, and goodness—and his stories.

Sincerely,

Peter Graham,Vice President, Byron Society of America

Andrew Stauffer, President, Byron Society of America

The effects of the loss of Dr Peter Cochran on 20 May 2015 on Byronists and Byron studies worldwide will be immeasurable.

Peter himself had for many years given up trying to summarise the huge range of his contributions, and his entries in the programmes for Byron events yield only bland overviews such as ‘Peter Cochran edits the works and correspondence of Byron on the International Byron Society website’ (London, 2013) and ‘Peter Cochran has written innumerable articles on Byron, edited Byron’s text for Garland and others, edits the Newstead Abbey Byron Review and is Research Fellow of the School of English of Liverpool University. He is currently working on an edition of Michael Rees’s translation of Teresa Guiccioli’s Lord Byron’s Life in Italy’ (Liverpool 2003). At Dublin in 2005 he mentioned that he had become a Senior Research Fellow at Liverpool and ‘hosts the celebrated Hobby O website’.

Such descriptions are of course woefully inadequate  in representing Peter’s work, and  it is characteristic of his generosity of spirit and his wish to share everything he wrote with everyone possible, and also the fact that he was an early and enthusiastic pioneer of information technology, that it is to Peter’s own website https://petercochran.wordpress.com that we must go to see something of the great extent of his expertise, his huge industry in transcribing and editing Byronic texts (including the diary of Hobby O - John Cam Hobhouse), and  his deeply knowledgeable but fiercely independent commentary on almost all aspects of matters Byronic.

The task of writing Peter’s obituary will be demanding (though one he would have relished himself, and perhaps there is an autobiography waiting to be unearthed in his house in Cambridge, among the hordes of material there on Byron and his other enthusiasms, which included a boundless knowledge of film and television drama). I assume that Peter had his first taste Byron’s work during his undergraduate degree in English at Cambridge, but it was not until after he had established successful careers, first as an actor (including for the Royal Shakespeare Company) and then as teacher and Head of Drama at the Hertfordshire & Essex High School for Girls, that Peter began to study for his PhD on Byron with Professor Drummond Bone at the University of Glasgow, preparing a ground-breaking edition of The Vison of Judgment. He went on to edit (almost always from the original sources) most of Byron’s verse and prose, as well as many collections of letters to Byron, and to publish commentary on many aspects of Byron’s life and times, including book reviews which became a touch-stone for Byron criticism. Characteristically, he made all these available online in easy-to-use formats to anyone who was interested, and his website became the source for Byron scholars, critics and enthusiasts worldwide.

While the website shows the depth and range of Peter’s work, it cannot represent his great and inimitable personality. All of us will have our own memories of his ebullience, his wit and humour, his enthusiasm, his strong likes and equally strong dislikes, and the powerful sense of his presence in a room, which was perhaps related to his abilities as an actor and director. He was at his most stimulating when often also at his most combative, and the individuality of his ‘take’ on Byron (which was often painfully critical for many of us) gave an edge and excitement to what otherwise might be bland or over-academic debates. I have sometimes thought the effect of Peter’s presence may have been a little like that of Byron himself – intelligent, generous, funny, enthusiastic, challenging and always interesting and exciting , although sometimes also a little alarming.

Through his scholarship, energy, friendship and exceptional generosity, Peter has helped to bring countless people into the Byron ambit, and to make us all better Byron scholars and critics, and his work and his memory will live on through the Byron community in that most positive of ways. In the last few weeks we have been privileged to receive his daughter Abi’s touching and sensitive accounts of his final illness and death, and these have reminded us that he was also a dearly-loved father and grandfather, and we share our great sorrow at his early death with his family and all those who have been close to him.

Dr Christine Kenyon Jones

Research Fellow, King’s College London

Last week, the world of Byron studies was shaken with the passing of Dr. Peter Cochran. Peter’s impact on generations of Byronists has been felt through seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the works, influences, and lives of Byron and those around him, as well as his countless edited collections, monographs, and online edition of the poet’s works and letters.

The IABS wishes to extend it deepest sympathy to Peter’s family and friends, and will be posting an obituary on the IABS website in the near future.

Dr. Cochran has been instrumental in furthering Byron studies for over 20 years, and now he is quite ill.

Most if not all members of the IABS know, and hold in deep affection, Peter Cochran. Many students and scholars around the world have benefited enormously from his online scholarship on Byron - indeed, in many parts of the world his work has made the serious study of Byron possible, where it might otherwise not have been possible.

Everybody who studies Byron is indebted to this indefatigable, endlessly knowledgeable, scholar. And how many conferences, for many years, have been enlivened by his vivacious, wonderfully eccentric but deeply informed personal presence? Behind the scenes, he has helped to bring on, encourage and educate countless young Byron scholars. He is present everywhere in the Byron world. But those who know him will also be aware of his long-standing health problems, and he is now critically ill in hospital.

The IABS and the whole of its membership hopes this great man and distinguished Byron scholar will overcome his illness.

This is to inform you that Professor Afrim Karagjozi of the Albanian Byron Society passed away recently.

His student and friend Dorian Koçi sent this brief note:

"Profesor Afrim died two days ago in the age 73 years old. It is a very great loss for us. I published an article today Farwell Professor. Please spread the bad news to all the members of Byron International Society."

Dorian's tribute to the Professor is at http://doriankoci.blogspot.in/2015/05/lamtumire-profesor.html