Byron's Letters and Journals

Byron's Letters and Journals #5

by Lord Byron

This volume, containing the letters written during the first year and a half of Byron's self-exile, reveal an increasing maturity and honesty that give them a new flavour. The very best letters are the ones from Italy, particularly those to Hobhouse, Kinnaird, Murray, and Moore. Freed from the inhibitions of English society, Byron's spirit seemed to expand and his letters to reflect the joie de vivre that, despite his melancholy, was an inherent part of his character.

Genres: Romanticism

309 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

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

[Sherwood Smith]

The different volumes seem to be scattered through hundreds of listings, testifying to Byron's enduring popularity. These thoughts will therefore have to do for all the volumes.

Byron the man is soooo different from the Byron he tried to present to the world--and of course from the angsty, bad-boy Byronic hero that still persists today. (I don't think he invented the type--the classics are full of them, right up to Milton's Satan, but he gave us the modern version)

Byron can be self effacing, disarmingly wry about his short comings, anxious as opposed to the high emo of 'angst' as the word is now understood in English, fumbling. Squinting past the blurring effects of time and wilful editing of surviving papers (my guess is of evidence of teh gay), I get the impression that he was mostly gay, but bi enough to try for a semblance of life in the Regency haut ton. Lady Blessington is quite revealing during her interview with him, when she talks about how quaint his idiom and habits--evidence of an earlier time--Gronow makes it clear that the Regency buck evolved into the dandy, or became a figure of mockery.

Byron's attempt at marriage was a disaster. It's difficult to parse what he was looking besides an intellectual companion in his princess of parallelograms, or what she sought, but whatever it was, they found exactly the wrong thing in the reality of the bedroom, with no glitterati looking on. Byron probably should have known better, but I wonder how aware he was that his primary attraction to Caro Lamb was when she dressed her tiny body up as a boy, in order to sneak to visit him. The cross dressing, and not the Caro inside the clothes, appears to have tripped his trigger.

Anyway it was enough of a disaster that he had to get outside the country to save his career, and his standing. The later letters and journals are sad: he'd fallen in love with a boy again, but remorseless time was against him---he hated being old and fat, and my guess is, he was not too sorry to die, young as he was.

What he left in the letters and journals are fascinating glimpses of his time, discourses on creativity, on fame, on the semblance of fame, and on a variety of other fascinating subjects that make the letters and the few journals left to us an absorbing read.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Byron's letters are hilarious. This is generally pretty obvious, but reading several volumes of these letters, even from a really difficult period in Byron's life - my god. The letter where he talks about the "league of incest" he's accused of creating with Shelley is hysterical. And in his letters to Lady Melbourne, Byron creates this campy, totally over the top persona - like your gay best friend, only he's sleeping with every woman in sight (including his sister). And I hate to laugh at Caroline Lamb's expense, but when Byron's writing about her in his letters... well, let the hilarity ensue.

Examples:

From November 11, 1818, to John Cam Hobhouse, on the "bitter" dedication of Don Juan to Robert Southey:
"The Son of a Bitch [Bob Southey] on his return from Switzerland two years ago--said that Shelley and I "had formed a League of Incest and practiced our precepts with &c."--he lied like a rascal--for they were not Sisters--one being Godwin's daughter by Mary Wollstonecraft--and the other the daughter of the present Mrs. G[odwin] by a former husband."

From October 28, 1816, to Augusta Leigh, regarding Annabella Milbanke (his now ex-wife):
"Miss Milbanke appears in all respects to have been formed for my destruction..."

And so on.

On a more professional note, Leslie Marchand has done an incredible job collecting, referencing, and publishing these letters. This eleven-volume set is an resource beyond all value.