Don Leon: Leon to Annabella

by Lord Byron

Published in the early to mid-19th century, Don Leon is unique in English literature. It is a powerful outcry against injustice, a moving and erudite defense of male love, and an account of Byron's sexuality, which on the whole has proven to be true. Among neglected masterpieces, Don Leon heads the list -- not only neglected, but vilified and rigorously suppressed. It is great literature. It is also pornographic, by earlier standards. The Pagan Press edition is complete and unbowdlerized, with added critical material. This is the great gay epic, a powerful reading experience and a treasure trove of information for gay scholars. This is the definitive Don Leon. To prepare it, editor John Lauritsen spent days in New York City's Morgan Library, which has the unique surviving first edition of Leon to Annabella and the oldest surviving edition of Don Leon. The two poems and the 66 pages of original notes contain many passages in Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian. This is the first and only edition to translate them into English.

"Don Leon is certainly an important, key document of early gay dissent. You have done great work on it & I hope it does well." -- Ian Young, poet. The Stonewall Experiment
"You really cannot overstate the importance of Don Leon. Ulrichs cites him at length." -- Hugh Hagius, Classics scholar. Author of Gay Hustlers of World War II.
"Indispensable new edition of Don Leon." -- Beert Verstraete, Emeritus Professor of Classics. Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West, Homosexuality in Ancient Greek and Roman A critical bibliography.
"Clearly Don Leon will be an invaluable resource, not only because all the Latin phrases etc. are translated into English." -- Rictor Norton, Myth of the Modern Homosexual, Mother Clap's The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830.

127 pages, ebook

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.