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 fas...
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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...
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 tr...
Byron’s uncle Fred the Caricaturist
Byron's uncle Frederick George was a satirical cartoonist in the 1780s and early 1790s
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.
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...
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.
An announcement
To celebrate the bicentenary of the first publication of Byron’s “Don Juan” on 15 July 1819, I’ll be releasing an annotated and narrated version of Cantos I + I...
Death in Don Juan
If Don Juan is lots of fun, as I claim, why does death figure in it so frequently?
Don Juan: who needs it, who reads it?
In a previous article I lamented that Byron’s great comic poem Don Juan is not read as widely as it deserves. As the greatest comic poem in the languag...