Lord Byron: The Major Works

by Lord Byron, Jerome J. McGann (Editor)

Byron is regarded today as the ultimate Romantic, whose name has entered the language to describe a man of brooding passion. Although his private life shocked his contemporaries his poetry was immensely popular and influential, especially in Europe. This comprehensive edition includes the
complete texts of his two poetic masterpieces Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan , as well as the dramatic poems Manfred and Cain . There are many other shorter poems and part of the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers . In addition there is a selection from Byron's inimitable letters,
extracts from his journals and conversations, as well as more formal writings.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Romanticism, Literature, British Literature, English Literature

1080 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2000

About the author

George Gordon Byron (invariably known as Lord Byron), later Noel, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale FRS was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond.

Byron's notabilty rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured upper-class living, numerous love affairs, debts, and separation. He was notably described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization, the Carbonari, in its struggle against Austria. He later travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever contracted while in Messolonghi in Greece.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often think about how Lord Byron was such a historically epic piece of shit that he reshaped the world in his wake. Seriously. Like, at some point while writing Prometheus he must have thought “I’m gonna be a Zeus-level fuckboi who leaves my mark forever too” and then absolutely did.* The poet who wrote Don Juan was such a rich playboy ass that we now have computers, the horror genre and—depending on who you ask—the country of Greece. It’s important to remember this dude had money, just scads of it, and was also hot. Like really hot. So in case you were watching BBC Ghosts and thought “Hey, She Walks in Beauty absolutely SLAPS, why are they hating on my boy Byron?” which, fair, his poetry is pretty great, but let's take a minute to talk about how much Lord Byron sucked as a person.


Lord Byron looking off into the distance at something else he’s going to debauch

If the phrase “big D energy” was in the dictionary, it should have a photo of Lord Byron. The D assuredly does not stand for Daddy, because Lord Byron was such a deadbeat dad that computers were invented. His own deadbeat father, “Mad Jack” Byron, split and then promptly died at 35, so it’s not like he had a good role model here. But anyways, when his only legitimate child was born, her mother, Anna Isabelle Noel Byron said “you stay the hell away from that romantic poetry bullshit your father wasted himself on” and gave her some math to get down with instead. This child was the amazing Ada Lovelace who basically invented computer programming before computers even existed. That’s right, we can technically claim that Byron sucked so much and poet circles were such pits of debauchery that we are now able to enjoy this review electronically. And he was also a Luddite. So thanks, Byron? But mostly thank you Ada Lovelace, sorry your dad sucked.

Being stuck on a rainy vacation in a house in 1819 with Lord Byron was enough to essentially create the horror genre and two of the most famous monsters in literature. During this vacation, Byron and his friends Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and John William Polidori sat around telling ghost stories until Byron decided they should all write their own. Mary of course wrote Frankenstein. Polidori was lusting after Mary and Byron said “you know what would turn her on, bruh? Jump off a balcony!” So Polidori did it and broke his ankle and Mary was like “uhh…I’m married? To the other guy on this vacation with us?” So while laid up with a busted foot and hangover like the morning after a terrible frat house keg party, Polidori combined all the vampyric folklore he knew into one story and made it a classy, sexy, aristocratic vampire tale that basically set the model for all these stories to follow. The vampire in The Vampyre was based on Byron himself, and was a rich aristocrat who sucked the life out of those around him. LIKE BYRON. While Fifty Shades of Grey may have begun as Twilight fan fiction, can it be said that Twilight is technically Lord Byron fan fiction? It CAN and I WILL. Anyways, PB Shelley wrote a weird poem but was too much of a softboy to really do horror and Byron just didn’t even bother with his own assignment. Classic.

On this trip was also Claire Clairmont, Mary’s half sister who just so happened to have a Byron baby not too long after. Byron had just divorced his wife and was rumored to be having an affair with his half-sister and was like yea good luck with that and split to Venice. Mary and Percy said it was a weird look for Claire to be living with them and a mysterious baby lest the people start talking, so she sent her baby, Allegra, to live with Byron. When she arrived in Venice later to see Allegra, she discovered Byron was too busy chasing married women around that he dumped their daughter in a convent where she would die of typhus at the age of 5. Because Byron is a dick.

He also once tried to purchase a 12 year old girl. I shouldn’t have to say this but uhhh…don’t do that. But DO in fact visit the Mary Shelley house in Bath if you can, which has some cool Byron stuff and a lot of history of that fateful trip which I very much enjoyed while paying tribute to ole George Byron:


Dude had many, many affairs and left chaos is his wake. Women jumped into canals over breakups, and one followed him around leaving notes that said “remember me?” for him to find. He would mock her in a poem he wrote about it called ‘Remember Thee, Remember Thee’ because he's a prick. But a sexy prick. I mean, Hugh Grant played him in a film. Not the oompa-loompa one, unless Roald Dahl has some explaining to do.
OH and when Percy died on a boat he had modified to try and compete with Byron’s boat, Byron asked if he could keep his skull. Everyone was like uhhh George, buddy, didn’t you like…once make a wine goblet out of someone’s skull? And he was all uh yea why? So he got declined on skull ownership.

And sure it’s fun to dunk on this guy for being a rich asshole but like, he did write some banger epic poems and was also into freedom. Byron funded the Greek war of independence against the Ottoman Empire and rode around with the army. He didn’t fight, he just wore the uniform and slept around as he does and wrote a bunch of love poems to Lukas Chalandritsanos. He caught a fever and died at the age of 36 while in Greece but he raised so much money for the revolution that after they won he became sort of a folk hero there. So that’s cool I guess. Dude was a raging narcissist and misogynist so there is a bit of poetic justice that, seeing as he had no “legitimate” male heirs, his title was passed to his cousin instead.

Historical figures are complicated people. Lord Byron was definitely an icon and a playboy who reshaped the poetic landscape and is still studied to this day, but he was also pretty much insufferable as a human being unless he was trying to sleep with you. And probably still even then. Enjoy your computers!

*I have been scolded that Byron could not realistically have used that terminology in 1816, I apologize for my deceitful ways. All above dialogue is satirical.

January 22nd is Lord Byron's birthday and I celebrate it every year. Come join, we have cake.

[Alok Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's keep it as 'passionate' and then, romantic and then only universal, at times only. Byron was an avowed lover - a lover of beauty and ideas. His poems express his concerns passionately and vehemently. You can disagree with his views but you cannot ignore him.

[Allwhitenoise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been getting me laid for well over a decade, and will continue to help me get laid for many decades to come; and that's how you know it's a Classic immemorial.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Byron has been my favorite Romantic poet--as he was during the Romantic period--since I have been able to read with ease (say, since grad school).
His "English Bard and Scotch Reviewers" sets the standard for English literary satire since Jonson and Dryden, very funny critique of an intellectual elite much less doubtful than ours today. We need another Byron. On the Poet Laureate, "'God help thee, Southey,' and thy readers, too." Adding, "A bard may chant too often, and too long." Still, he dedicates Don Juan to Southey (subject of Lewis Carrol's great parody, "You are Old, Father William.") His dedication includes English Bards type criticism of Coleridge, "Explaining Metaphysics to the nation--/ I wish he would explain his explanation."
In fact, Don Juan expands on his English Bards, where he satirizes Walter Scott and "the simple Wordsworth"--almost a compliment since Lyrical Ballads aspired to simplicity.
Many wonderful lines, "With just enough of learning to misquote," and before you trust in critics, "Believe a woman or an epitaph."
He summarizes politics (now the US under criminal president): "Shrink from Ridicule, though not from Law. // Such is the force of Wit!"

His "Don Juan" is without equal in English literature; maybe Ariosto's similar in Italian, though I think Byron more witty, finally. On his college (Brit for high school), he mocks his own education:
"For there one learns--'tis not for me to boast,
Though I acquired-- but I pass over that,
As well as all the Greek I since have lost,
I always say there's the place--but 'Verbum sat'..."

He ends the First Canto with his parody 18C "address to the reader":
"But for the present, gentle reader! and
Still gentler purchaser! the bard-- that's I
Must, with permission, shake you by the hand...

'Go, little book, from this my solitude!
I cast thee on the waters--go thy ways!
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The world will find thee after many days.'
When Southey's read, and Wordsworth understood,
I can't help putting in my claim to praise--
The first four rhymes are Southey's, every line:
For God's sake, reader! take them not for mine!"
(Collins, 1959. p.410)
His Canto II takes Juan (rhymes with "new one") on maritime adventure, where his ship is dismasted, on its side. The Longboat is readied for a twenty people, out of 300 aboard.
"while this
Was going on, some people were unquiet,
That passengers would find it much amiss
To lose their lives, as well as spoil their diet."
Next stanza begins, "There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms/ As rum and true religion..."(II. 34).
Such wit leads to terrible losses in the lifeboat, like Juan's grampa's dog, eaten by the starving, and his tutor Pedrillo draws the bad lot to be killed and eaten. Adventure story a la the films I do not attend. But Byron rescues Juan, the only one who survives--because he can swim, began in the Guadalquivir in his native Seville.
Byron's, and his Don Juan's, main literary legacy is the greatest of all Russian poems, Евгений Онегин. I have read perhaps one-fourth of Pushkin's great work in Russian*, and it has struck me as a cross between Byron and Wordsworth.
Since I have spent many hours translating Latin and Renaissance Latin, I admire Byron's exact critiques of classical poets like the epigrammatic satirist Martial--"the nauseous epigram of Martial" according to Don Juan's/ Byron's mother.

I should add, as a reader of Russian, that the Soviets praised Lord Byron for his support of the early labor movement, the "Frame-Breakers," the fabric hand-weavers who destroyed the first knitting machines (frames). Byron published in the Morning Chronicle, 2 March 1812, "Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill,"
"Those villains, the Weavers, are all grown refactory,
Asking some succour for Charity's sake--
So hang them in clusters round each Manufactory,
That will at once put an end to mistake...

Some folks for certain have felt it was shocking...
Than life should be valued at less than a stocking..
this hope,
That the frames of the fools may be first to be broken,
Who, when asked for a remedy, sent down a rope."

* I must add I based my latest book, "Parodies Lost,"(2016) on Pushkin: a biography of my college friend Tom Weiskel, Harold Bloom's favorite young colleague at Yale, who invited it sent to his New Haven residence with, "I think of Tom every day. I still grieve him."

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, Byron's very popular. Sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads: they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lord Byron! One of my secret-not-so-secret historical crushes. What bravado! What swagger! And he died in the middle of fighting in a war? While being a modern gigolo on the side?

Though I rarely talk about personality when I write book reviews, I think it's important to remember that no matter how much we attempt to divorce a text from an author, something of his or her way of being translates through. Byron was a romantic in many senses of the word. His words are lofty, and they waft around. They work in meter, they work in rhyme, and they work in that raw sensory feeling good writing hits the gut. Sometimes he fails in his ambition. Sometimes his poems don't work because of our silly modern understandings of culture (Don Juan, for example). At the same time, Byron is a writer we all look up to for a reason.

He impresses on the text just as much as his biography does over the screen.

[katherine drake · Rating 4 out of 5]

He may have limped with a club-foot,
but his words danced.

[Candie Looney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lord Byron inspired me throughout my adolescence and quickly became on e of my favorite poets. I still treasure my oxford worlds' classics book that was a gift from my High School Senior English teacher, Mr. Sergent. He instilled my love for literature!

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a friend who says she ranks Lord Byron above all the English Romantic poets--even above Keats. I can't agree, even though reading through this I understand why she would. She thinks Keats sometimes overwrought. I don't agree really. What can I say, he sings to me. The only poem of Keats I don't like is Edymion, his one epic poem, and one even Keats admitted was problematic. Even that has lines to relish: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

Not that there aren't some gorgeous verse of Byron that can rank with the best of Keats--Byron's most famous poem arguably is "She Walks in Beauty"--notably it's short. As are almost all the other poems of his I'd count as favorites: "Darkness," "Prometheus," "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte," "We'll Go No More a-Roving." "By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat Down and Wept," "I Would I Were a Careless Child." Byron is a more varied poet than Keats; Byron wrote in an astonishing variety of forms and lengths--I have to give him snaps for that. But maybe because of that experimental quality, unlike with Keats, I found a lot more misses than hits with Byron. To me Byron too often wore out his welcome at longer lengths. There was an exception though, and one that goes to the heart of his appeal--to me and to my friend. That poem was his epic Don Juan. It was funny, snarky, catty, witty, and like Dante, Byron is not afraid to take things to a personal level with personalities he knew--have a stanza:

He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued
His self-communion with his own high soul,
Until his mighty heart, in its great mood,
Had mitigated part, though not the whole
Of its disease; he did the best he could
With things not very subject to control,
And turn'd, without perceiving his condition,
Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician.

My friend thinks Keats all too earnest. And I admit there's something charming and refreshing in a Romantic poet that doesn't take things too seriously, who has a sense of humor. On the other hand, Don Juan, his comic masterpiece, remained uncompleted at his death. And I can't say I can put it up there quite with the epic poems I've loved, the works of Homer, Vergil, Dante--even Milton for all his flaws. I do recommend giving Byron a try. His poems deserve to be better known, and he deserves to be better known than the poet of just "She Walks in Beauty" and the man known as "mad, bad and dangerous to know."

[Marusa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love his way of writing and the way he sees the world. I find myself in a lot of his poems and sometimes think, "He stole my idea!" =) My favorite one is Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - especially "Canto the second" part.

[Tahseen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beppo and The vision of judgement were definite favourites, but this is a volume to keep at hand to read again. I wonder why Byron was never mentioned at school.

[Riley G.]

*sigh* As crazy a guy Byron was, Berlioz’s got me wanting to read some of his works. 😵

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over 1000 pages of Byronic verse, drama, and letters. Byron has never been my favorite poet, but I dutifully trudged through this volume, the first Byron I have read since college. Byron is at his best when he's using his tongue-in-cheek ironic voice, and can sometimes be quite funny. But much of his works are just not that accessible to modern readers, especially Childe Harold, which is a bore. Certainly parts of Don Juan are still fun to read, but towards the end it begins to feel interminable.

There are also a couple of dramatic religous pieces where Byron reimagines Biblical scenes in a new light. Again, these are not exactly uninteresting, but don't have the same sort of controversy today that they must have had at the time. His feud with Wordsworth though is still pretty funny. There is not much in the way of introduction or context given to most of the poems here, which is also a ding on this collection. Footnotes are at the end of the book and the reader has to flip to end to read them. Still, this looks like the most comprehensive collection out there, as far as I can see, if that's what you're aiming for.

[Fernando Barriga · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would only write something about "Darkness", when Byron describes man reduced by darkness to a beast, lost and terrified, illustrating the "hideousness" of a "fiend". Man is reduced to an irrational beast "howling" and "clawing"; he has moved from sanity to madness, from civilization to primitiveness.
What is presented, then, is a vision of man driven mad and desperate by a blackened planet, and there is no evidence that life will begin again. The final passages of that poem relate a return to chaos which is eternal: the death is one not only of the earth but of the universe as well.
I chose this poem because it makes me think about the environmental disaster that we are experiencing today and how the human being, "the most intelligent animal", has become so intelligent that we have the planet on the verge of collapse.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Lord Byron... I still have one of my favorites memorized...

"She walks in beauty, like the night
of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright,
meet in her aspect and her eyes..."

[Jani · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a way, Guybrush Threepwood introduced me to Lord Byron. Perhaps the connection is not that straightforward, but nevertheless the fact that Mr. Threepwood uses the word 'orange' to stop an otherwise endless cycle of pirate singing and a random comment on a later teacher's part that dear Lord managed to rhyme everything except orange (a difficult task in the early 19th century even if it has become easier later), lead me to buying this rather sizable volume of poetry. And they blame video games for kids not reading...

Not that I rushed into reading this hefty volume as soon as I received it. It did, in fact, take several years for me to venture into the world of this rather prolific poet. However, this year I finally got around to it. In a sense, the fact that reference in a Monkey Island game lead me to Byron proved to be quite proper. The volume at times offers wickedly funny passages where witty flow of words makes reading aloud rather more difficult due to chuckling. Furthermore, the adventures of the protagonist of His Lordship's poems share a resemblance to the later adventures of the video game pirate, or rather vice versa: both include plenty of hapless endeavours on the romantic front, narrow escapes and, indeed, nautical even piratic themes.

Sadly, similarilities are also present on the negatives as well: like the video game series, Byron stretched his works too far. Only the most endurant reader can manage all of Don Juan without feeling that the poem could perhaps been edited a bit, but then again during Lord Byron's days he was payed for quantity as well as quality, just like in the modern world's game industry where a good serie is milked to its last drop. One could also imagine that some of the jokes of the early Monkey Island include references to events and artefacts that many of the younger generations do not fathom, much like The Major Works of His Lordship (of course, no fault of his).

In the end, perhaps a shorter volume of Byron's works might have been enough and some of the poems could have been replaced by more thorough background information, but then again finding out yourself what amuses and inspires you is always that much more rewarding. I mean, who would download the walkthrough to an adventure game at the same time as downloading the game itself?

[Ben Doeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arguably, the first modern celebrity and certainly the most famous literary man of his time. A few awe-inspiring lyrics and so many staggering full-length works and closet dramas mean he wasn't all reputation either.

Of the long poems, I definitely prefer the chatty, comic Byron of the later years (well 29-36, his death) to the early brooding intensity. That said, I've recently been browsing through 'Manfred', a work which combines utterly compelling nihilism with breathtaking perspectives on the Alps - such as

It is not noon -- the sunbow's rays still arch
The torrent with the many hues of heaven
And roll the sheeted silver's waving column
O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular,
And fling its lines of foaming light along,
And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail... (April 29 2011)

[Mei · Rating 5 out of 5]

You're telling me this man is worst person in the world who had intercourse with everyone including his biological sister. Then he proceed to write the most beautiful poems you could ever imagine????? what a world we live in lmfao. poems 10 outta 10 though
p.s. bu adamin hayatini okurken agzim acik kaldi nasi bu kadar igrenc bi insan boyle seyleri yazabilir diye. cervesinde erkek olsun kiz olsun sevismedigi insan birakmamis, kaci kendisi yuzunden intihar etmis. oz kizini arkasina bile bakmadan kari pesinde kosmak icin manastira birakip gitmis (hastalanip olmus kiz 5 yasindayken) Daha neler neler var yani. neyse siirler harika

[Christopher Manieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The renowned Byron wrote some amazing and very influential poems. I love Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, with its many nostalgic historical reflections, a memorable work which I think surpasses even his epic, Don Juan. Byron excelled in both lyrical and narrative verse, providing brilliant moments and much satirical skill. Though he is definitely a great poet, Byron lacks the serious wisdom and profound depth of his fellow Romantics. His passion for Italy and for Greek independence is often appreciated.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great edition, boasting a large sampling of Lord Byron's work. As titled, the most significant works are included, but a host of smaller, lesser-known work are as well.

I especially appreciate the combination of scholarly endnotes, and Byron's own notes for works like Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

This is one I am marking up and wearing out.

[Grouphug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don Juan is an amazing thing, its funny for something so old!
The rest of the poems are great, just awesome too.

[Michael Ledezma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unrivaled power and intensity. Where Keats excelled in lyricism, Byron excels in virile exuberance.

[N Malvika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of memories with this one. Read this a
lot in school :)

[Descending Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Byron was a genius, no doubt. This has some of the biggest hits but there is a lot that had to be left out for space. A great major works collection.

[Harsh Kumar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty interesting indeed but not good enough though. A good poet but not a great one. Some of the poems and stanzas were pretty amazing. I read more than 500 pages but then I had to give it up. It was becoming boring for me.

I was not impressed by the Don Juan. The way he told the story of Don Juan through his rhymes is admirable but yet not very interesting.

I read a few pages more after I gave it up but was not able to finish it all

Nevertheless a very good romantic poet
His talent of using the words in such a beautiful manner is surely excellent.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went - and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light

[Emmanuel Orchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to describe Lord Byron? You could start with Caroline Lamb’s famous epithet — “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” — but that only gives you a piece of the story. It’s true: to his native England, Byron was an amoral philanderer and liberal agitator. (He famously cheated on his wife with his half-sister and fled for Europe after a highly publicized lawsuit.) But to Greece, where middle-aged Byron died of fever, he was a national hero whose legend still endures today. To us, Byron is less complicated. He is remembered mostly as the author of Don Juan and Childe Harolde, two poems that capture so much of Byron’s character but so little of our attention nowadays that it is hard to conceive the man was once one of the most famous people alive. His presence today is felt pretty much only in stuffy Romantic Poetry lectures and even stuffier Goodreads reviews written by nerds like me.

In all fairness, Byron’s work is so closely fastened to the political and literary climate of early 19th-century Europe that it can be hard to recommend much of his stuff to contemporary readers. Even the decently well-informed will not understand some of his cheeky little jabs at other poets — for those people, most of “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” and “The Vision of Judgment” will go way over their heads. Byron’s learning, wit, and incredible mastery of ottava rima fares better. You don’t need to have a fancy degree to appreciate Byron at his best:

And, after all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but
The truth in masquerade; and I defy
Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests to put
A fact without some leaven of a lie.
The very shadow of true Truth would shut
Up annals, revelations, poesy,
And prophecy — except it should be dated
Some years before the incidents related.

This stanza springs from Byron’s observations of high society, where politicians “live by lies, yet dare not boldly lie.” In it you can parse Byron’s frustration with what he views as the rhetorical half-measures powerful people adopt to please. Byron would prefer that we all just stop pretending and get real, yet that would be paradoxical — like the “truth in masquerade” — it’s Pinocchio admitting to being a liar. It’s also brilliant, and vivid, and elegant, and most of all a total non-sequitur from Don Juan, which is purportedly about a young nobleman’s mishaps and adventures. The poem's pretensions of plot are a play, a masquerade. In truth, Donny Johnny is about Byron. The plot is merely a device aimed to misdirect people who aren’t paying close enough attention:

But what’s this to the purpose? you will say.
Gent. Reader, nothing; a mere speculation,
For which my sole excuse is — ‘tis my way,
Sometimes with and sometimes without occasion
I write what’s uppermost, without delay;
This narrative is not meant for narration,
But a mere airy and fantastic basis,
To build up common things with common places.

So to answer the question I started this review with — about how to describe Byron — he’s a bona fide literary rockstar, with all the glamour and baggage talent brings. Byron isn’t “bad,” per se; he wasn’t “mad” so much as he was misunderstood; and as is the case for most rockstars, he’s more fun to read about than he is to know. He was beastly to his ex-wife Anne in private, and he had no scruples about sharing his marital indiscretions with anyone who’d listen. He baldly wrote to Lady Melbourne in 1812 that he prefers the intimate company of married women who do not require “time & all the cardinal virtues.” Of course Anne left him and took their child. Instead of repenting for his misbehaviour, Byron chose to victimize himself in his work:

For ‘tis a low, newspaper, humdrum, law-suit
Country, where a young couple of the same ages
Can’t form a friendship but the world o’erawes it.
Then there’s the vulgar trick of those d—d damages!
A verdict — grievous foe to those who cause it! —
Forms sad climax to romantic homages;
Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders,
And evidences which regale all readers!

Byron was cancelled in his era but embraced by history, which tends to emphasize his more sympathetic traits. Firstly, he was bisexual when homosexuality was a sin — many of his letters were suppressed to hide his sexuality after he died. Secondly, he genuinely sympathized with the plight of the oppressed. There is his martyrdom in Greece, but Byron was active even during his time in the House of Lords, where he outspokenly opposed a law punishing “frame-breakers” with the death penalty, advocating, in a way, for worker’s rights. He won no points for this — he did it out of principle. And surprisingly enough, he constantly provided for his brilliant daughter Ada Lovelace, who in turn revered her absent father.

Byron’s a complicated figure. You have to really engage with him when you’re reading his work — you have to decide for yourself whether you approve of the world he imagines and the ideals he espouses. You cannot, in Byron’s case, separate the art from the artist. Famously, Byron himself was unable to: after constant critical scrutiny and a belaboured poetic back-and-forth, he was forced to admit that Childe Harolde was autobiographical, writing in the dedication to its fourth canto that he had “become weary drawing a line which every one seemed determined not to perceive.”

Yeah, no shit. It’s just this sort of attitude — this literary brilliance coupled with a near-complete lack of self-awareness — that I consider the hallmark of Byron’s oeuvre. Despite leading a life of extraordinary privilege — the “Lord” before his name is there for a reason — Byron was never able to appreciate his fortune and talent. When I read Childe Harolde and Manfred, I’m reminded so much of other young, disaffected, and privileged celebrities — if he wasn’t born a 19th-century poet, I’m certain Byron would have fronted an emo band and dominated the tabloids:

What from this barren being do we reap?
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
And all things weigh’d in custom’s falsest scale;
Opinion an omnipotence,— whose veil
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale
Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.

It’s easy to understand Byron, even if you don’t condone some of his behaviour. He left it all on the page. He spills his guts in his poetry. I get the sense it was therapeutic for him, that he wrote so he could feel less alone:

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow’d
To its idolatries a patient knee, —
Nor coin’d my cheek to smiles, — nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

If you do Byron a kindness and get to know him, he’ll make you better. There are very few writers who can air out their dirty laundry as eloquently — on that note, I’ll leave off this review with one of my favourite stanzas of his. It’s about my profession, but it really could apply to Byron’s work too:

A legal broom’s a moral chimney-sweeper,
And that’s the reason he himself’s so dirty:
The endless soot bestows a tint far deeper
Than can be hid by altering his shirt; he
Retains the sable stains of the dark creeper,
At least some twenty-nine do out of thirty,
In all their habits: — Not so you, I own;
As Caesar wore his robe you wear your gown.

[Ayushi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darkness is an absolute favorite of mine.

An excerpt:
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal;

[Amanda]

I just named my fish after Lord Byron, and totally referenced a poem by his contemporary, Sir Walter Scott, that I thought Byron wrote. Whoops! I must read some as pitance.

[Valerie]

Working my way through Byron. I prefer Robert Browning, Tennyson and Kipling.