From the Library of Sigmund Freud: The Works of Lord Byron

Broadcast 22 January, 2024. Duration: 1 hour 31 minutes

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This is the first in a series of online talks that explore the significance of books from Sigmund Freud’s library preserved in his final home at 20 Maresfield Gardens, and to raise funds for their conservation.

In this special online talk, the Freud Museum welcomes psychoanalyst and academic Professor Dany Nobus in conversation with Byron scholar Dr Christine Kenyon-Jones, on the subject of Sigmund Freud as a reader of Lord Byron.

Professor Nobus and Dr Kenyon-Jones ponder why The Works of Lord Byron (comprising five volumes) was among the many titles that Freud chose to rescue and bring with him from Vienna to London when fleeing Nazi persecution in 1938. Did the poetry of Lord Byron have a special significance for Freud? Might it have been that Byron’s poetry influenced his revolutionary thinking in particular ways?

The 1842 edition published by Tauchnitz, is one of a number of books from Freud’s library identified as being in need of urgent conservation. We are launching an Appeal to raise £30,000 to protect Freud’s library and carry out urgent conservation work on this and other important at-risk titles. Every donation will help cover the costs of specialist conservator fees and equipment for the on-going conservation of Sigmund Freud’s study, collections and couch.

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Speakers

Dr Christine Kenyon Jones is a writer and lecturer and a Research Fellow in the Department of English at King’s College London. She has published widely on Byron, including on his voice and his religious views, his love of animals and his after-life as a science-fiction character. ‘Dangerous to Show: Byron and his Portraits’, written jointly with Geoffrey Bond, was published in 2020, and her most recent book, ‘Jane Austen and Lord Byron: Regency Relations’ will be published by Bloomsbury next month.

Professor Dany Nobus is a Clinical Psychologist, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, former Chair and Fellow of the Freud Museum London, and Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council. He is currently Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology at Brunel University London. His main research interests include the history, theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the history of psychiatry, the intersections between psychoanalysis, philosophy and the arts, and the history of ideas, especially with reference to the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. In 2017, Dany Nobus was awarded the Sarton medal of the University of Ghent for his outstanding contributions to psychoanalytic historiography.