“Of all Bitches dead or alive a scribbling woman is the most canine,” Byron commented to Hobhouse in 1811. His target was the author Anna Seward, whose books of sentimental poetry he derided as “6 tomes of the most disgusting trash” (BLJ 2: 132). Byron’s antagonism to female rivals never let up. In 1813, when selecting his all-male gradus ad Parnassum, he declared: “I have no great esteem for poetical persons, particularly women; they have so much of the ‘ideal’ in practics, as well as ethics” (BLJ 3: 221). By 1820, when he was living in Italy, he instructed his publisher John Murray not to send him “feminine trash” especially verse by “Mrs. Hewoman” (Felicia Hemans, who had been heavily influenced by Byron and was now threatening to overtake him in popularity) – for if she “knit blue stockings instead of wearing them it would be better” (BLJ 7: 182–3). When embarking on drama, he pronounced: “Women (saving Joanna Baillie) cannot write tragedy; they have not seen enough nor felt enough of life for it” (BLJ 4: 290). Authorship derives from phallic power when he quotes Voltaire: “‘the composition of a tragedy requires testicles,’” speculating mischievously: “If this be true, Lord knows what Joanna Baillie does – I suppose she borrows them” (BLJ 5: 203). If this was hinting that Baillie was derivative, it may have been a smokescreen to divert attention from Baillie’s influence on his own Venetian tragedies.