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Don Juan Cantos I & II, Bicentennial Edition
An annotated and narrated edition of Cantos I & II of Byron’s Don Juan, celebrating 200 years since first publication. Download & enjoy.
Byron Bits 10: Gone with the Wind
Byron was not only out of his country and out of favour, self-exiled in Italy, but also out of his own time. Philosopically, he belonged to a world that was fast disappearing as his greatest poem appeared in the press.
Byron Bits 9: Virtuosic Rhyme
Why, I wonder, does Byron, whose intellectual curiosity was enormous and who loved the opera, the theatre, drama — and dramatic individuals — make no reference in his greatest poem to the musical revolution that…
Byron Bits 8: Juan & Older Women
She was not old, nor young, nor at the yearsWhich certain people call a ‘certain Age,‘Which yet the most uncertain age appears… Lord Byron, Beppo xxii (1817) Byron’s verse brought many expressions into common use.…
Byron Bits 7: Sex and Instagram
Byron’s comic epic Don Juan is on the surface a boy’s own adventure but it soon becomes apparent that it’s not boys who are not driving the narrative.
More Byron Bits
Byron Bits are short talks on Lord Byron’s greatest poem. BB5 and BB6 explore the penultimate episodes in the unfinished poem and ponder what point Byron was trying to make in his scandalous epic.
Byron Bits: short talks on Don Juan
Byron Bits: short recorded talks on Lord Byron and his great, unfinished poem, Don Juan.
Byron’s uncle Fred the Caricaturist
Byron’s uncle Frederick George was a satirical cartoonist in the 1780s and early 1790s
The Venetian Cantos of Don Juan
Byron wrote Cantos I and II in Venice, amid the excesses of Carnivale in 1818 and 1819 — his excesses, at least — and just before he fell in love with the pretty, precocious, unhappily-married, 19-year-old, Teresa…
Précis of Cantos I and II of Don Juan
Cantos I & II of Don Juan are each about 14k words. I’m trying to make 140-word summaries. Surprisingly difficult when you know the text well.