Editorial

This issue presents essays on a variety of stimulating topics, and brings together work by up-and-coming Romanticists from Canada, Spain, the UK, and the US. The first essay, by Stephen Webb, discusses Hobhouse's various uses of the brand 'Byron', converging on a copy of A Journey through Albania presented to Viscount Sidmouth and its key biographical and political implication. The two shorter pieces, by Charlotte May and Rachel Retica, each deal with undiscovered letters, providing full transcriptions and commentaries–May presents a new 1814 letter from Lord Holland to Samuel Rogers, centred on the controversy surrounding the suppression of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; Retica offers a reading of a re-discovered 1820 letter from Byron to Count Alborghetti which provides more detail about this chapter of Byron's life in Italy. Sara Medina Calzada's essay introduces us to the first Spanish biography of Byron, published in 1873, and the ways in which it reflected and modified Byron's reception in nineteenth-century Spain. Gabriele Poole's essay takes us into the territory of Byron's drama, taking a cue from the mirror scene in Sardanapalus and its implications for the complexities of Byron's changing public image, in the wider context of the Byronic Hero and Byron's own political endeavours.

It is the saddest of duties to report that earlier this year, we lost two much-loved Romantic scholars: William St Clair, who died unexpectedly on 30 June, aged 83, and Michael Rees, Brother Teilo of Caldey Abbey, who left us on 20 September, aged 90. William is remembered here in Sir Drummond Bone's obituary; Brother Teilo shall be remembered in the next issue.

This issue also brings you the annual instalment of the international society reports–this time from America, Japan, Messolonghi, France, Ireland, and Newstead Abbey– to keep you posted on Byronic activities and events around the world. The Messolonghi Byron Society is especially delighted to report on its newly refurbished Byron Museum and the current bicentenary exhibition on the events of the Greek War of Independence. A report from the 46th IABS conference hosted by Thessaloniki's Aristotle University this summer, as well as a much-awaited report from the salerooms round off the issue.

As the world steadily returns to normal, we remain hopeful about 2022 bringing us all much-longed-for opportunities to meet again intellectually and as a community in the form of an array of Byronic and Romantic events. For starters, the 47th IABS conference, themed 'Poet and Reader', will take place in Moscow 26 June–3 July 2022, hosted by the Gorky Institute. Many of us will be looking forward to that very much indeed!