SOURCE: McGann, Jerome J. “‘My Brain is Feminine’: Byron and the Poetry of Deception.” In Byron: Augustan and Romantic, edited by Andrew Rutherford, 26-51. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

In the following excerpt, McGann traces the development of Byron's verse in the context of sentimental poetry, investigating the neglected influence of Dacre on Byron's juvenile poetry, and, through Byron, offering a conceptual framework within which to better appreciate Dacre's sentimental eroticism.

I

I begin with a mouldy anecdote, a late supplement to that once-flourishing industry—now part of the imagination's rust belt—called ‘Curiosities of Literature’.

In 1894 a short article appeared in Notes and Queries under the heading ‘Byroniana’. Its subject was a poem entitled ‘The Mountain Violet’ which the author of the article, Henry Wake, attributed to Byron.¹ The case for authenticity was argued on two counts, one archival and one stylistic. The archival argument observed that...