Death in Greece

Marilyn Butler

Byron’s Letter and Journals, Vol. XI: For Freedom’s Battle edited by Leslie Marchand
Murray, 243 pp, £11.50, April 1981, ISBN 0 7195 3792 4
Byron: The Complete Poetical Works edited by Jerome McGann
Oxford, 464 pp, £35.00, October 1980, ISBN 0 19 811890 2
Red Shelley by Paul Foot
Sidgwick, 293 pp, £12.95, May 1981, ISBN 0 293 98679 7
Ugo Foscolo, Poet of Exile by Glauco Cambon
Princeton, 360 pp, £15.00, September 1980, ISBN 0 691 06424 5

We can know Byron better than anyone has ever known him. Leslie Marchand’s edition of the Letters and Journals, which is far more extensive than any previous collection, has now covered Byron’s whole life. J.J. McGann’s complete edition of the poems is proceeding expeditiously: the three volumes to date include all the poems written before Byron left England in 1816, and Volume II has the whole of the masterpiece Childe Harold, including Cantos III and IV, which were written in exile in 1816 and 1818.

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Vol. 3 No. 17 · 17 September 1981 » Marilyn Butler » Death in Greece (print version)
pages 11-12 | 4920 words

Letters

From Jeremy Stiles

SIR: ‘The trained reader of poetry will feel that Foot has left the poetry out, and the trained historian will be no more satisfied,’ writes Marilyn Butler (LRB, Vol. 3, No 17). So people may be trained in poetry-reading as they are trained in hairdressing or computer-programming. Fortunately, Paul Foot has a larger readership. He writes primarily for those who are not trained in anything but who enjoy reading interesting books.

Jeremy Stiles
London SW17

From David Ayers

SIR: Although it was never difficult to assess the political stance of the controllers of the London Review, Vol. 3, No 18 must have caused a wry smile to cross many other faces than my own as it joined the other bourgeois media in publicising the SDP. The review of a book on the party by a party member would not have gone amiss in the SDP’s own periodical – not that the SDP has as yet any need to do its own printing. I am sure that I am not alone in having subscribed to the LRB since its inception with the vague notion that I was helping the arts in difficult times, though realising well that I was helping to provide a platform for many whose ideas and ideology I reject. Many must like myself regret that the Review has opted to abuse their support by helping the careers of a small number of professional political opportunists who rely for electoral success on the bias of media coverage. If the LRB provided a broad political platform then there would be less room for objection. For instance, in LRB, Vol. 3, No 17, the first three pages could have been devoted to a review of Paul Foot’s important new book Red Shelley by a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party. Instead there were only a few paragraphs buried on page 12 by a careerist academic in an Oxford ivory tower. But it was inevitable that this should be so. For my own part, I have decided to let my subscription lapse, and I hope that others will do the same, although it cannot be expected that the editors of the Review will radically alter their position.

Does this fall within the category of speech to which you allow freedom, rather than that to which you do not?

David Ayers
Bradford