Converting Byron in Victorian Devotional Poetry Collections

Abstract

This essay examines the variety of religious remediations of Byron’s poetry in the Victorian period, arguing that the poet’s specialized inclusion in Victorian devotional poetry anthologies signals the logic and politics of evangelical Christianity. Carefully anthologized selections of Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage and Hebrew Melodies in devotional poetry collections like The Pious Minstrel (1831), Beauties of Modern Sacred Poetry (1862), and The Sunday Book of Poetry (1864) allowed publishers, editors, and readers to claim Byron as either a converted, saved Christian poet or as a lost soul who occasionally expressed the pious insights of someone on the brink of conversion. Byron’s posthumous reception in Victorian evangelical discourse is an understudied phenomenon that parallels other forms of Victorian Byromania that attempt to “convert” the poet and his works. I argue that the remediation and circulation of Byron’s anthologized devotional poetry offers insights into Victorian conceptions of Christian living, prayer, devotion, and piety.