Selected Letters and Journals

by Lord Byron

Excellent Book

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry, Biography Memoir, Biography, Classics, History, 19th Century

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

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

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lord Byron limped fast, died young, and left a good-looking corpus.

The review is pretty much downhill from here.

Actually, and not to sound flippant, dying at 36 was probably the shrewdest career move Byron ever made. Thanks to that timely fever in Greece, he never had to watch himself shrivel up into a pathetic old roué or swell into an alcoholic Tory (or worse, a poet laureate). Besides, it’s not as if he was ever going to write a better poem than Don Juan, and he’d already enjoyed a sex life as rich and varied as Charlie Sheen’s. What was left for him to do? In those pre-Dancing with the Stars days, there were no second acts in celebrity lives.

I think it’s widely accepted now that Byron was a lousy poet. The aforementioned Don Juan is still fun in small doses, but the rest of his poetic output is just one hot, purple mess, as far as I can see. But my God, what a prose writer he was. His letters are jittery, palpitating things. They crackle with manic energy. Even when he’s just bitching, he bitches with gusto:

This place [Cambridge] is wretched enough—a villainous chaos of din and drunkenness, nothing but hazard and burgundy, hunting, mathematics, and Newmarket, riot and racing. Yet it is a paradise compared with the eternal dullness of Southwell. Oh! The misery of doing nothing but make love, enemies and verses!

Or he here is describing a ham actor he saw in some provincial theatre:

His figure is that of a hippopotamus, his face like the bull and mouth on the panels of a heavy coach, his arms like fins fattened out of shape, his voice the gargling of an alderman with the quinsy, and his acting altogether ought to be natural, for it certainly is like nothing Art has ever exhibited on the stage.

Caroline Lamb’s famous line about Byron—I can’t bring myself to quote it, and if you don’t know it already, you’re probably still a nice person, but you really need to stop goofing around on the Internet and go read some books—isn’t exactly contradicted by his letters. He was indeed a total manwhore, who collected other men’s wives the way I collect commemorative spoons. Even by today’s standards, his habit of bragging about his conquests seems—what’s that old word?—caddish. Yes, he was a notorious cad, and probably a blackguard too, whatever that is. At the same time, it’s almost impossible to dislike the Byron of the letters. For all his vices and melancholy, he was an incredibly fun guy. More surprisingly, he was also sane and down-to-earth, with a healthy appetite for human absurdity (including his own). As Disraeli once said of him, “If anything was more characteristic of Byron than another, it was his solid common-sense.” This sounded comically obtuse to me the first time I heard it, but he’s right. Other people might forget that Byron was just a man, a “poor,forked animal,” but he never did. After mentioning to a correspondent that a young American admirer had come to visit him in Italy, he remarks:

I suspect that he did not take quite so much to me, from his having expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf-skin breeches, and answering in fierce monosyllables, instead of a man of this world. I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?

But he wasn’t all snark and sarcasm. Some of the most moving letters in the book are those to his estranged wife, where his pain and baffled love are all too apparent beneath the elaborate courtesy. I don’t really know what went on there, and I probably don’t want to know; I mean, I’m sure he was an asshole to her, but it’s pretty obvious he came away with some lingering wounds of his own.

I’ve already quoted too much, and all this italicizing is driving me nuts, but I’ll just throw in one more bit. When Don Juan was starting to come out, and all his friends were shitting bricks over the naughty parts and begging him to tone it down, Byron wrote to his publisher:

You are right, Gifford is right, Crabbe is right, Hobhouse is right—you are all right, and I am all wrong; but do, pray, let me have that pleasure. Cut me up root and branch; quarter me in the Quarterly; send round my disjecta membra poetae, like those of the Levite’s Concubine; make me, if you will, a spectacle to men and angels; but don’t ask me to alter, for I can’t: I am obstinate and lazy—and there’s the truth.

So I guess you can add integrity to the list of Byron’s unexpected virtues. And, oh yeah, he helped liberate Greece from the Ottomans. What’s a bit of incest and pederasty against all that? Come on, the guy practically earned it.

[Flo · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

He can be cold, detached, heartless, witty, kind, charming, sensitive. He can be a thousand men in one.
He had a beautiful style, even while writing a simple letter. You can really appreciate the power of a well-written letter, especially now, in the world of abbreviations and ridiculous acronyms (you try to write “*****ng” and just when you reach the letter “n”, my God, it's impossible to continue; we all know typing the letter “g” can be such a waste of precious seconds that you can use to stare your keyboard, INCYDK --yes, that means "in case you didn't know", I can't believe you didn't get it...).

Byron, a man that lived too fast and slept with half of the female population in 19th century England (including, maybe, a half-sister), had interesting views on life, love, politics, religion. And he wrote about all that with such an irresistible humor, insightful irony, that you can't prevent yourself from falling in love with his personality, no matter how mad, bad and dangerous he may have been. On the other hand, he really loved some of his conquests, he was able to appreciate a woman's intelligence, he's been described as a loyal friend, he loved animals and he fought against the Ottoman Empire to free the Greeks. He wasn't all that bad...

Anyway, there was a time where I found myself a bit obsessed with his life, not a Lady Caroline kind of obsession, but still. There's something in him that makes you want to know more. There's a mixture of everything; melancholy, superficiality, wit, humor. I can't imagine what people felt when they actually met him.
All in all, I don't dislike his poetry, but I love his prose. I always come back to his letters and especially, his journals, made of feelings that defy time.

Jul 28, 13
* Also on my blog.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read, especially his Alpine Journal from September 1816. Through the course of these entries, I liked when he referenced specific pieces he was working on, e.g. Mazeppa, Childe Harold, Don Juan, Cain (pp. 280-2), and Lara (p. 357). I loved that he was working on Sardanapalus after having perused Seneca's tragedies (p. 246). [I just finished reading six of his plays, translated by Emily Wilson.] I liked his comments on various people, especially Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth. The section entitled "Anthology of Memorable Passages in Byron's Letters and Journals" is absolutely invaluable (pp. 325-36).

Some special highlights include his letters to Coleridge re: the Christabel poem (pp. 114-5); to Murray on the famous Ghost story competition at Diodati (pp. 195-7); and his letter to Goethe (p. 294). Also, I was touched by his writing about a fan letter he received from a dying woman who said that Byron's works had contributed to her pleasure and she simply wanted to let him know. Byron wrote to Thomas Moore that he could not burn the letter as she had requested since "I look upon such a letter, in such circumstances, as better than a diploma from Gottingen" (p. 255).

[Rayna]

I am sort of on a Lord Byron kick so bear with me. His writings were a joy to read. It was romantic, cynical, and a little macabre at times.

[Vincent Eaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stuff. A stylist with content that keeps a grin going right across the face.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you put a rating on someone’s private letters and journals? Writings that were never meant for the public eye?

Byron is a Romantic, naturally writing beautifully. He was obsessive, falling in love quickly and tragically. I felt as I was the one experiencing his travels, setting sail on new adventures. These were my favorite parts of the collection, where Byron shares about his trips and the ecstasy he felt. The mundane entries were necessary, as these letters were personal, but a bit tiring to read. Yet it did give an inside look to another day and age.

This collection is captivating, but the four star rating comes from the repetition of subjects that cannot be helped through the collection of personal writings. As a reader, I became a bit weary of reading about the same subjects. But these writings were never meant for me to read and isn’t it quite human to latch on to a subject matter to the point of enamored obsession?

[Isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was tempted to simply review "Lord Byron, OG Disaster Bi"

However, joking aside, this is a fascinating and nuanced insight into the life and experience of a seemingly tragic and depressive figure who is, perhaps unfairly, often only remembered as a player. His obsessions, lethargy, feelings of inadequacy and masking wit are all prevelant from page to page. Even when he is being dismissive or even quite offensive, you can't help but like his charms or feel for his struggles. I do recommend reading the biography section before the letters as I think it gives a much better context for some of the interactions that I only knew in context.

My only difficulty with this book is that sometimes the footnotes did not help at all in context, especially when giving the explanation in Greek or Italian and so you have to break your reading flow to translate the context given in the footnote.

[Michael Springer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The vast majority of Byron's letters selected for this book are those he wrote in Italy. Leslie Marchand spent two years collecting letters and journal entries published in this book. If you like Lord Byron's writing, this book is a must-have in your library.

[Pete]

I keep this on my book shelf, occasionally reading a letter written to his mother and think, "Wow. What a cool guy."

[NHU · Rating 5 out of 5]

Am re reading this splendid collection of letters, perhaps the best ever written. I rediscovered this book which had been in storage while I was in Viet Nam. What a pleasure!

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14122722

[Eric Byrd]

To read next!