HomeThe Byron Online Project

The Byron Online Project

Welcome to the Byron Online Project, which is conceived as an outreach website in anticipation of a digital version of Byron's complete correspondence forthcoming (using TEI). BOP explores the relationship between the letters Byron wrote during his Mediterranean Tour (1809-1811) and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I-II according to the criterion of place.

The Omeka platform is structured according to items. Each letter, place and person name appears as an item and can be consulted as such. Items are categorized according to collections, and this site has four collections: the letters Byron wrote (84), those that he received or were relevant to him (44), places named (225) and persons named (224). All of Byron’s letters appear as Items in the Collection “Byron’s Mediterranean Tour (1809-1811): The Letters,” and from these 84 letters are the person and place names taken. One significant addition to this updated version of BOP is the system of Item Relations between letter, persons mentioned, and places mentioned. If one consults a letter written by Byron, the author, recipient, place of composition and destination, as well as the places and persons mentioned in the letter will be listed below. One can also search according to place or person name. The Map tab permits the user to explore place names interactively.

This revised edition of BOP includes ten letters found in the Marchand edition (Vols. I & II) that are not included in the Cochran online edition. All ten letters are marked with an asterisk in the header. The Cochran edition includes one letter not found in the Marchand edition (Byron to Hobhouse, 1811-02-28). By using the Neatline tab, the visitor will have access to two exhibits. Exhibit One maps the place names in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I-II. Exhibit Two, “Mapping Byron’s Mediterranean Letters and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I-II: By the Numbers,” presents all of the place names on a single map with the addition of the digital tool Voyant that calculates word frequency. Using Voyant, one can find the frequency of a word occurring in the letters or the poetry. 

BOP would not have been possible without the generosity of the late Peter S Cochran who shared with me the diplomatic transcriptions over which he laboured for twenty years. I would also like to thank David Radcliffe (Virginia Tech) for introducing me to the editing power of the Text Encoding Initiative.

PMC October 2018, v.2

Neatline De-bugged, February 2024

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