Before James Michener and William Warner, or more recently, writers like Tom Horton and poets like Meredith Davies Hadaway, there was only one real writer passionately committed to capturing the essence of the Chesapeake Bay. His name was Gilbert Byron.
Some people know of his work, many do not. By choice, Byron spent his entire writing career in a small isolated cabin near the town of St. Michaels until his death in 1991, very far away from the lucrative and seductive environs of New York City’s publishing world.
Students of Byron contend his decision to forgo literary ambition to remain authentically tied to his native Eastern Shore was the price paid for his simple, almost Thoreauvian lifestyle. It didn’t seem to bother Gilbert as he spent his life documenting the Eastern Shore through poetry, short stories, letters and through the celebrated best seller “The Lord’s Oyster.”
In the third installment of Mid-Shore Lives, the Spy talks to writer Tom Horton, Jacques Baker; the author of the recently published, Gilbert Byron: A Life Worth Examining; and the highly respected Jim Dawson of Unicorn Books to talk about their friend and the lasting contributions he made to honoring the culture of the Eastern Shore and its way of life.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. With special thanks to Easton’s Bill Thompson for his contribution of photography. Gilbert Byron’s collected works can be found at Unicorn Books in Trappe. Byron donated his letters and manuscripts to Chesapeake College and Washington College, his alma mater, shortly before his death. His St. Michaels cabin has been preserved and moved to Pickering Audubon Center outside Easton and is open to the public.
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