A Tribute to John Clubbe (d. 24 February 2022)

We are very sad to announce the passing of John Clubbe, former president of the IABS and the Byron Society of America for many years. John Clubbe died on February 24, just a few days after his 84th birthday.

He was Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky and taught at Duke University for many years. Anyone who attended an IABS conference experienced his warmth, intelligence, and wide-ranging lectures on inter-disciplinary subjects. With Joan Blythe, who helped him run the IABS with great aplomb, he shared his erudition in conferences all over the world, including Tokyo, Salzburg, Beirut, and Tbilisi, to name only a few. He gave the Leslie Marchand lecture on Byron and Beethoven, the subject of his last and widely reviewed book with Norton, which has sold over 3500 copies. Many will wish to share their memories of this kind and supportive scholar, who brought scholars into the study of Romanticism and Lord Byron. A fuller notice of his career will follow in due course.

John Clubbe, PhD Columbia University, 1965. Attended Sorbonne, 1966. Taught at University of Kentucky, 1976-99. Formerly taught at Columbia, CUNY, University of Munster (Germany), Duke. Research and teaching interests in English Romanticism (especially Byron) and the Victorians. Also taught a popular course on the works of Wendell Berry. Honors include Guggenheim (1975-76), NEH (1983-84), Visiting scholar, Harvard (1989-90.) Author of Victorian Forerunner: The Later Career of Thomas Hood (1968), Byron et la Suisse (1982), English Romanticism: The Grounds of Belief (co-author with Ernest J Lovell, 1983), Victorian Perspectives: Six Essays (co-author with Jerome Meckier,1989), Cincinnati Observed: Architecture and History (1992). Editor of Selected Poems of Thomas Hood (1970), Two Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle (1974), Nineteenth Century Literary Perspectives (1974), Carlyle and His Contemporaries (1977), Froude’s Life of Carlyle (1979.) Former assistant editor for Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Duke University Press.) His latest publications include Byron, Sully, and the Power of Portraiture (2005) and Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary (W. W. Norton, 2019.)