University of Virginia Library

Byron's principal twentieth-century editors, E. H. Coleridge (in The Works of Lord Byron [London: John Murray, 1901], 4:545-547) and Jerome J. McGann (in Byron: The Complete Poetical Works [hereafter CPW], 7 vols. [Oxford: Oxford UP, 1980-1993], 4:210212, and 496-497n333) agree on this point. For a summary of the circumstances surrounding the composition and publication of the Medwin volume, see Lovell's Captain Medwin: Friend of Byron and Shelley (Austin: UT Press, 1962), especially chapters 5 and 6. See also Lovell's edition of Medwin's text, Conversations of Lord Byron (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966).

The poem also appeared simultaneously with the Journal of the Conversations in the October 23rd issue (No. 405) of The Literary Gazette, and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, and Sciences, &c. (684). However, this text is taken directly from the first edition of the Journal so has little bibliographical significance. The Literary Gazette did review the Attic Miscellany in its previous issue (October 16; 657-660), and reprinted many of the extracts. Therefore, the Attic Miscellany text was known to them; it must have been published by the middle of October.

For more on the journal, see T. C. Grattan's Beaten Paths; and Those Who Trod Them, 2 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1865), 2:62ff. No other issues appeared beyond this initial one, despite puffing reviews in The Literary Gazette (No. 404; Oct. 16, 1824, 657-660) and The Examiner (No. 872; Oct. 17, 1824, 665-666) and continued advertisements for it in The Examiner (No. 873; Oct. 24, 1824, 688); (No. 876; Nov. 14, 1824, 734).

In addition to Grattan's Beaten Paths, 2:62-63, see Lovell's Captain Medwin, 170ff., for the details of this transaction.

See Paula Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert's edition of the Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 383-401 passim.

A companion article to this one, "Byron, Medwin, and the False Fiend: Remembering `Remember Thee,' " examines the variants introduced in the Attic Miscellany texts of Byron's brief lyric "Remember Thee" and its accompanying anecdotes regarding Lady Caroline Lamb. Medwin and/or Colburn chose to eliminate some of the more inflammatory material from the published Journal, despite its earlier appearance in the Miscellany. See Studies in Bibliography 53 (2000), 265-276.

See CPW 4:496-497.