Letters 1812-1813

NOTE: These transcription notes have been arranged in chronological order and are made available for researchers in the hope of stimulating further work on the life of Lady Caroline and her circle. Although they have been checked for accuracy, the transcriptions (which attempt to reproduce the original in its orthographic rawness) inevitably contain errors. The original letters should be consulted, and permission must be granted by the appropriate archive if they are to be quoted in published work.

Please contact Paul Douglass if you have any questions, corrections, or comments.

The files below include transcriptions of letters written by Lady Caroline Lamb [née Ponsonby] from 1812 to 1813, a period which includes her love affair with Lord Byron and its immediate aftermath, in which she suffered a sort of nervous collapse when her family spirited her off to the Irish estate of the Bessboroughs in Kilkenny. She seems to have begun writing her first novel (published in 1816 as Glenarvon) in this period, and formed a fraught but durable relationship with Byron's publisher, John Murray.

The letters are referenced by the call letters and catalogue labels employed by their various sources, and the correspondents and their locations (when they are clear) are noted. Shorthand has been used for Lady Caroline Lamb [LC before her marriage, and LCL thereafter]. In some cases, the reader will find a partial transcriptions, single excerpts, or summaries. Many letters have been printed, and the printing, if known, is cited in the header. Occasionally, the only identifiable source of a letter is a print volume like Lady Bessborough and Her Family Circle. Here is a sample note.

LCL to Lady Bessborough. Bessborough Papers, West Sussex Records Office, Chichester. Wed., Jan. 15 [14], 1807. Transcription printed in Bessborough and Aspinall, Lady Bessborough and Her Family Circle, 156-57.

When no date was found on the original letter, but the date has been determined by biographical or other clues, including any archivist's notes appended to the original, this too is noted. For example, the second known letter of Lady Caroline is headed by this note, which includes the annotation "n.d." for "no date" and the reasons for probable dating suggested in brackets:

LCL to Georgiana, Lady Morpeth, future 6^th Countess of Carlisle. Castle Howard MSS J18/35/87 n.d. [1807? If so, probably Spring]

All text that has been interpolated is bracketed. For example, if Lady Caroline writes "Miss T" and the transcriber feels confident that she refers to "Miss Trimmer" (the author of educational works for children), the transcription reads "Miss T[rimmer]." In the case of missing, ambiguous or uninterpretable text, brackets and question marks appear. For example: "Ld M[elbourne?]" or "–I know you are all [capining??] for want of me" or "Wm laughed out loud at your letter & [Lady?] [?] remarks he begs [??]" Some additional information about historical events, or the identities of persons named in the letters, is included in footnotes.

Note: All letters held by the John Murray Archive were viewed at 50 Albemarle Street, the site of the John Murray Publishing House, rather than their current location in archives of the National Library of Scotland, where they may consulted now. I am indebted to Virginia Murray for her kind assistance in my research. --PD