You've Got Mail

I'm just reading through Leslie Marchand's epic complete edition of Byron's letters. They are completely captivating. I've just reached the period when - after the publication of his poem Childe Harold - he'd woken up and found himself famous, become the first great international celebrity. He was involved in a wild series of affairs, including with his half-sister, Augusta. The following is from a letter to Annabella Milbanke, the clever, prim, proper, ferocious woman he would later marry, with disastrous results. Nobody before him could have written this but dozens of writers afterwards (Rimbaud, Hemingway, Kerouac):

'The great object of life is Sensation - to feel that we exist - even though in great pain - it is this "craving void" which drives us to Gaming - to Battle - to Travel - to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.'

If ever a woman was warned in advance....