‘Such conduct bears Philanthropy’s rare stamp’: The Byronic Hero’s Good Works

Abstract

This article presents for the first time a file of petitions sent to Lord Byron, now held in the John Murray Archive of the National Library of Scotland (MS 43523) and catalogued in 2022. It analyses a sample of the letters and argues that Byron’s correspondents (all outside his regular social circle) framed their requests for assistance based on their reading of scenes of philanthropy in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and the Turkish Tales, where the image of the Byronic hero was consolidated. The article goes on to discuss the nature of the Byronic hero’s imaginary giving, characterised by secrecy and unknowability, and why this model was attractive to petitioners in real life. Byronic philanthropy thus provides a new lens to examine the entanglements between literary and epistolary and material cultures in the Romantic period, as well as offering scholars valuable new evidence of Byron’s personal generosity and charitable practices.