Some six weeks ago, I dropped Glenda off at one of her sisters’ places to enjoy a celebration of her birthday. This was a Saturday. I don’t usually go to thrift store on weekends, but I had hours to kill. On my second stop, I spied a smallish book stuck in between much larger volumes. I pulled it out not realizing that I would be dedicating many hours of research and reading to it over the following weeks.
The spine was imprinted Don Leon, printer’s device, Lord Byron. This certainly got my attention, and the book was very well made and in great shape. Opened up to a very attractive title page, no date but published by the Fortune Press. I looked back at the spine and on the bottom The Fortune Press was imprinted. And on the page facing the title page was a notation that this was copy # 915 of 1,000. I know the Fortune Press and I figured it was from the 1920s or 30s. And that this was a very nice find.
Upon arriving home with my gift-laden wife, I headed up to the computer and typed in Lord Byron and looked through his Wikipedia page. No mention of Don Leon. What??
So, I typed in Don Leon, and up comes its Wikipedia page:
Don Leon is a 19 th-century poem that claims to be by Lord Byron, and which
celebrates homosexual love, makes a plea for tolerance. At the time of its writing, homosexuality and sodomy were capital crimes in Britain, and the nineteenth century saw many men hanged for indulging in homosexual acts.
As Don Leon includes in its narrative and notes several incidents that happened after Lord Byron’s 1924 death, it obviously could not have been written by him.
The poem is well constructed and extremely well written, showing evidence of a classical education and knowledge of the processes of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, as well as an intimate knowledge of the poet Lord Byron’s life, including his youthful homosexual adventures on his travels 1809-11 and his romantic friendship with the beautiful choirboy John Edlestone whilst at University of Cambridge. This has led to the supposition that it may have been written by an intimate friend of Lord Byron’s – however not by one who was concerned about his posthumous reputation. It was not common knowledge that the poet was what we would now call bisexual until the twentieth century.
The Fortune Press limited edition in 1934, was seized and ordered destroyed, although several copies escaped the destruction and come up every so often on the rare book market.
My next step was to go into the reference library and retrieve my copy of R. A. Caton and the Fortune Press by Timothy D’Arch Smith.
This book was published by Bertram Rota, London, 1983. They were and still are one of the foremost rare book dealers, with a speciality in literature. Here are some passages from the book:
In 1934, Caton was prosecuted for obscene libel. Police in their raid seized a number of titles an the publisher was arraigned “to show cause why a number of books, papers, writings, prints, pictures and drawings, alleged to be obscene and kept on the premises for the purpose of gain, should not be destroyed. “ He was found guilty and the seized books were to be destroyed.
Don Leon was one of the titles seized. This was no. 101 of the books listed in the bibliography. Smith in his book referred to it as “a pseudo-Byronic pastiche”.
The entry for Don Leon is – Don Leon: a Poem to which is added Leon to Annabella (1934). 128 pages. A new edition of a Charles Carrington title. Caton did not comply with the destruction order, and a number of copies were still in stock in 1971.
So, now I undertook two lines of action:
1. Find out who wrote it, and
2. Read the book to see what all the fuss was about.
Using AI and other sources here is what I discovered – nobody knows who wrote it, aside from the fact that it was not Byron. Interestingly, I found out that Byron’s memoirs were burned shortly after his death by a committee of friends and other interested parties. They must have been interesting!
It was first published in 1866 by William Dugdale, who appears to have believed initially in the attribution to Byron as he attempted to blackmail Byron’s family.
Scholar John Lauritsen was one of those who believed that the poem was written from someone within the Shelley-Byron circle.
However, a more recent and far stronger claim has been made by scholar Charles Upchurch that the author was William Beckford. In 1817, Jeremy Bentham wrote to Beckford, asking that he produce a work that argued against the punishment of men for sex with other men, and which employed classical references to support its argument.
Another candidate was John Cam Hobhouse, a close friend of Byron, later Baron Broughton.
Others suggest it was written as a group effort from Byron’s circle, given the varied style and content.
Bottom line (nice phrase) nobody knows who wrote it.
Meanwhile, I read the entire book. There are three sections:
1. The poem Don Leon – 1,465 lines on 51 pages.
a. I understand why it would be considered obscene. This musing will end with photos of some passages, not the worst.
b. Lots of Greek, Latin, and some French sections.
c. Lots of big words that I have never seen before, and I did not bother to look them up.
2. The Notes section that went on for 50 pages, in small print.
a. Many references to famous Greek and Roman personalities, who had homosexual tendencies.
b. Many court cases in the UK
c. No one knows who wrote the Notes either, with the same assumptions.
3. The poem Leon to Annabella, epistle from Lord Byron to Lady Byron.
a. The photo below covers it quite well.
Don Leon is a crucial, rare and mythical piece of gay history, advocating for tolerance and
featuring explicit content.
