‘With the Authors Compts’: John Cam Hobhouse’s Uses of ‘Byron’

This article focuses on the intersections of politics, celebrity, authorship, and print culture in John Cam Hobhouse’s publishing career and his associations with Byron. The nature of print authorship and Byron’s ascendant celebrity status forced Hobhouse to consider the dichotomy between individual and author. As Byron’s meteoric literary rise contrasted with the slower and haltingly achieved political trajectory of Hobhouse, the latter was not above using his earlier and ongoing publishing and personal collaborations with Byron as a means to attain political standing. At Chicago’s Newberry Library I discovered a previously undocumented piece of marginalia: an authorial inscription by, or on behalf of, Hobhouse to Viscount Sidmouth in a copy of the first edition of his Journey through Albania , as well as some meaningful marginalia elsewhere in the book. In light of Hobhouse’s important role in instigating the destruction of Byron’s memoirs, this article reconsiders Hobhouse’s ambivalent relationship to the lasting effects of both print authorship and manuscript handwriting.