Abstract: On April 25, 1915, Denis Browne wrote a letter to Edward Marsh concerning the passing and burial of Rupert Brooke, who had died of a fever on a British hospital ship in the Aegean. Brooke and Browne were among the British troops sent to the Aegean to take part in the assault on Gallipoli, which the British and French hoped would force open the Hellespont and Dardanelles, cause Turkey to sue for peace, and bring a speedy conclusion to the First World War. This chapter shows that the Byronization of Brooke was an exclusively English enterprise, a kind of philhellenism without Greeks. Given the aura of Byron that had pervaded writing about modern Greece, it was perhaps too much to ask a group of aspiring young authors not to associate a fellow poet who had died of a fever on the eve of an assault against the Turks with the hero of Missolonghi.

Keywords: First World War, Byron, Denis Brown, Gallipoli, Rupert Brooke, philhellenism,