1817 Claire Clairmont gives birth to Allegra, Byron’s daughter (12 January). Completes Manfred (February). Has fever after the carnival season. Sets out for Rome (April), visiting en route Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, Florence, and writing The Lament of Tasso. At Rome rewrites Act III of Manfred. Hobhouse has Thorwaldsen make a bust of Byron (May). Leaves Rome (20 May) for Venice; soon moves to La Mira near by. Manfred published (16 June). Starts Childe Harold IV (June). The Lament of Tasso published (17 July). Turbulent affair with Margarita Cogni begins. Writes Beppo (6 September-10 October). Returns to Venice (13 November). Learns (10 December) that Newstead Abbey has been sold; gives directions about payment of debts.
1818 Carnival festivity (January–February). Beppo published (28 February). Another period of illness (gonorrhea). Attends the conversazioni of the Countess Benzoni. Childe Harold IV published (28 April). Continued promiscuous dissipation. Allegra is brought to Venice (about 1 May). Moves to the Palazzo Mocenigo (late May). Begins Don Juan (3 July). Shelley visits him at intervals (August–October). His lawyer Hanson arrives (November). Begins Don Juan II (13 December).
1819 Another carnival and another illness (January–February). Begins liaison with Countess Guiccioli (early April). Goes to Ravenna to see her after her illness (June). At her request writes The Prophecy of Dante (June). Mazeppa published (28 June). Don Juan I and II published (15 July). Follows the Guiccioli to Bologna (10 August). Returns to Venice with her (15 September). Has begun Don Juan III. Visited by Thomas Moore (October), to whom he gives MS of Memoirs. Another fever (28 October). Teresa’s husband and her father, Count Gamba, try to separate the lovers; prolonged quarrelling between husband and wife; Teresa persuaded to return to Ravenna with her husband. Finishes first draft of Don Juan III (30 November). Murray tries to stop piracies of Don Juan. Teresa again ill; at her father’s request, Byron leaves for Ravenna (23 December).
1820 In copying, divides Don Juan III into two cantos (January). Byron lives at the Palazzo Guiccioli with Teresa and her husband (February). Begins to be more interested in Italian politics. Starts Marino Faliero (April). Another Guiccioli crisis (May); the Count asks Byron to stop seeing Teresa; she demands separation; in July the Pope grants her father’s appeal for separation; she goes to live with Count Gamba at his country house in nearby Filetto. Byron finishes first draft of Marino Faliero (17 July). Becomes friendly with Pietro Gamba (Teresa’s brother) and joins a revolutionary society. During summer frequently visits Teresa at her father’s house. Writes Don Juan V (16 October-27 November) and completes fair copy (26 December). Continues Memoirs which he sends to Moore. Teresa and her father return to his town house in Ravenna (mid–November). Assassination of a military commandant near Byron’s house (9 December).
1821 Begins journal (4 January). Begins Sardanapalus (13 January). Alternately elated and discouraged by expectation of insurrection against Austria and by Italian failure (January–February). Writes reply to the Reverend William L. Bowles, attacking hypocrisy and defending the poetry of Alexander Pope (February). Writes to Murray about future plans for Don Juan (16 February). Places Allegra in convent of Bagnacavallo (1 March). Writes second reply to Bowles with criticism of the Lakers and Cockneys (March–April), but relents when he receives a conciliatory letter from Bowles (May). Enraged and humiliated by false reports that a London performance of Marino Faliero, which he had tried to prevent, had been hissed (May). Finishes Sardanapalus (27 May). Writes The Two Foscari (12 June-9 July). Writes Cain (16 July-9 September). Indignant when his servant Tita is imprisoned for several weeks (June). Promises Teresa to write no more of Don Juan (early July). In an attempt to drive Byron from Ravenna, the papal officials of the Romagna expel the Gambas (10 July). Shelley, concerned about Allegra, visits Byron (3 August), writes to Mary that Byron will move to Pisa. Don Juan III–V published (8 August) and Byron is annoyed at misprints. Sends Murray The Blues. While household is in an uproar over moving, Byron writes The Vision of Judgment (September). Begins Heaven and Earth (?October) and Detached Thoughts (15 October). After long delay, leaves Ravenna (29 October), joins Samuel Rogers at Bologna, travels with him to Florence, then goes on alone to Casa Lanfranchi in Pisa. For a while is contented in the Pisan circle: the Shelleys, Edward and Jane Williams, Thomas Medwin, John Taaffe, Jr., the Gambas. Disturbed by Hobhouse’s letter protesting the publication of Cain, a play that came out in a volume with Sardanapalus and The Two Foscari (19 December).
1822 Byron and Teresa sit for the sculptor Bartolini (January). Edward Trelawny arrives (14 January), encourages Shelley and Byron to have boats built, has his friend Captain Roberts submit plans. Byron finishes Werner (20 January), says he will sever publishing relationship with Murray. Infuriated (4 February) by Southey’s attack in the Courier, sends a prose reply to the newspaper, bids Kinnaird arrange a duel for him with Southey. Learns about denunciation of Cain, writes Murray a conciliatory letter (8 February). Inheritance after death of Lady Noel almost doubles his income. He and Shelley lend Leigh Hunt money to come to Pisa to start a literary journal. Confused encounter between members of the Pisan circle and an Italian soldier Masi, who is seriously injured (24 March); two of Byron’s servants and one of Teresa’s arrested. Don Juan VI resumed (14 April). Visit from Samuel Rogers (20 April). Byron learns (22 April) of the death of Allegra. Moves to Villa Dupuy, Montenero, near Leghorn (middle of July). Shelley’s boat arrives (12 May) and Byron’s Bolivar (middle of June), but he is uninterested, never uses it, not allowed by the government to cruise near Leghorn. Arrival of the Hunt family on the day of a quarrel among Gamba’s and Byron’s servants. To get Byron away from Pisa, the Austrian authorities banish the Gambas from Tuscany (2 July). At Shelley’s urging, Byron reluctantly consents to help Hunt with a magazine. Shelley and Williams drowned (8 July). Cremation of their remains (15–16 August). Friction between Byron, Mrs Hunt and her children. Completion of Don Juan VI–VIII (about end of July) and Don Juan IX (probably by 9 September). Arrival of Hobhouse (15 September). Byron and the Hunts leave for Genoa (21 September); on the way Byron becomes ill during a swim. Settles in the Casa Saluzzo in Albaro, a suburb of Genoa. Finishes Don Juan X (5 October) and the next day starts Canto XI, which he soon completes. Mary Shelley, living with the Hunts a mile from Byron, makes fair copies of Don Juan. The first number of the Liberal published by John Hunt (15 October), containing The Vision of Judgment. Byron offers John Hunt six cantos of Don Juan, Werner, Heaven and Earth (31 October). Again notifies Murray that their business relationship is ended (18 November). John Hunt prosecuted for libel because of his publication of The Vision of Judgment. Werner published by Murray (22 November). Byron finishes Don Juan XII (7 December). Health poor.
1823 Heaven and Earth published in the second number of the Liberal (1 January). Finishes The Age of Bronze (10 January) and the next day starts The Island. Mary Shelley copies The Deformed Transformed. Byron wants to withdraw from the Liberal. Writes Don Juan XIII, XIV, XV (February–March). Begins a brief association with Lord and Lady Blessington and Count Alfred D’Orsay (1 April). Arrival of Edward Blaquiere of the London Greek Committee (5 April) rekindles Byron’s interest in Greek war for independence. Begins to arrange his finances. The Blues published in the third number of the Liberal (26 April). Completes Don Juan XVI (6 May), begins Canto XVII (8 May), but writes only a few stanzas. Is elected a member of the Greek Committee in London. Has Pietro Gamba tell Teresa of his plan to go to Greece; both she and Byron depressed. Byron’s enthusiasm for Greece cools temporarily because of the Committee’s silence and the ignoble actions of some Greeks. The Blessingtons leave (1 June). Byron writes to Trelawny asking him to join Greek adventure, engages a vessel, the Hercules, its captain and a physician; orders elegant uniforms and helmets. The Island published (26 June). Byron irritated by Hunt’s reminders of his obligations to Mary Shelley; she feels estranged; Byron arranges to pay the travelling expenses of Mary and the Hunts back to England, but later seems to rescind money order for Mary. Byron, with Gamba, Trelawn
y and munitions, sails from Albaro (16 July), stops at Leghorn where others join his group. The Hercules reaches Argostoli, Cephalonia (3 August); Byron hears about dissension among Greeks, meets Colonel Napier. Don Juan VI–XIV published in three volumes (15 July, 29 August, 17 December). Byron hires a bodyguard of alleged Suliotes (unruly mercenaries on the western Greek islands, some of whom had been driven years before from Suli in Epirus). Meets Dr Henry Muir and Dr James Kennedy; Byron attends the latter’s discussions of Christian doctrine. Visits Ithaca, where he suffers a convulsion. Returns to Argostoli; ample evidence of Greek avarice, deceit, disunity and of Byron’s prudence and insight Tries to send Suliotes away. Moves ashore to a house at Metaxata (6 September); Trelawny leaves for Morea. Resumes religious discussions with Kennedy. Receives unfavourable reports about Greek military incompetence and lack of patriotism. Agrees to lend Greek government £4,000 for Greek fleet. Sails from Argostoli for Missolonghi (29 December).
1824 Agrees to pay for a year six hundred Suliotes; plans an assault against Lepanto. Troubles with the Suliotes multiply until Byron wants to be rid of them. Has severe convulsions (15 February). The Deformed Transformed published (20 February). Frequently depressed as military and political circumstances worsen, and his health deteriorates during March. He no longer expects to achieve Greek unity. Don Juan XV and XVI published (26 March). Final illness begins (9 April), is aggravated by mistreatment from physicians. Byron dies (19 April); his body is taken to England and buried in the Hucknall Torkard church, Nottinghamshire (16 July).
Further Reading
THE ROMANTIC ERA
Brown, Marshall (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. V: Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Butler, Marilyn, Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries: English Literature and Its Background, 1760–1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)
Gaull, Marilyn, English Romanticism: The Human Context (New York: Norton, 1988)
Renwick, W. L., English Literature: 1789–1815, and Ian Jack, English Literature: 1815–1832 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). Both in John Buxton and Norman Davis (eds.), Oxford History of English Literature.
Wolfson, Susan, and Peter Manning (eds.), The Romantics and Their Contemporaries, Vol. 2a of David Damrosch (ed.), The Longman Anthology of British Literature, 2nd edn (New York: Longman, 2003)
BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS
Blessington, Lady, Conversations of Lord Byron (1834), ed. Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). In Genoa, Italy in 1823, just before he left for Greece.
Crompton, Louis, Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Bisexuality, homoeroticism, cultural oppression.
Eisler, Benita, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). Sensationalizing.
Franklin, Caroline, Byron: A Literary Life (London: Palgrave, 2000). The forceful personality set amid readers’ reactions, social and historical situations (travel, theatre culture, expatriotism, press censorship and libel trials).
Garrett, Martin, George Gordon, Lord Byron, in the British Library Writers’ Lives series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Short, readable narration, beautiful illustrations.
Grosskurth, Phyllis, Byron: The Flawed Angel (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). Psychoanalytic.
Hunt, Leigh, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries (London: Henry Colburn, 1828). By one who knew him for the last ten years of his life – gossipy, biased, controversial.
Lovell, Jr., Ernest J. (ed.), His Very Self and Voice: Collected Conversations of Lord Byron (London and New York: Macmillan, 1954). A compendium from a range of sources.
MacCarthy, Fiona, Byron: Life and Legend (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). Some new material; gorgeous plates.
Marchand, Leslie A., Byron: A Biography, 3 vols. (New York/London: Knopf, 1957/John Murray, 1958). Detailed chronology; abridged and revised in one volume as Byron: A Portrait (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
Medwin, Thomas, Conversations of Lord Byron: Noted During a Residence with His Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822 (1824), ed. Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). The first of this genre.
Moore, Thomas, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life (London: John Murray, 1830); the first official biography, much reprinted in the nineteenth century. Online at: http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/CriticalandHistoricalEssaysVolume2/chap44.html
Page, Norman (ed.), Byron: Interviews and Recollections (New York: Humanities Press, 1985)
Trelawny, Edward G., Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858; new edn, 1878), ed. J. E. Morpurgo (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952). A rakish acquaintance.
EDITIONS OF POETRY, LETTERS AND PROSE
McGann, Jerome J. (ed.), Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–93); Don Juan, Vol. V. See also his Byron, one-volume selection of poetry (including all of Don Juan), letters and journals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
Marchand, Leslie A. (ed.), Byron’s Letters and Journals, 12 vols. (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press/John Murray, 1973–82). In one volume as Selected Letters and Journals (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
Nicholson, Andrew (ed.), Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)
Wolfson, Susan J., and Peter J. Manning (eds.), Lord Byron: Selected Poems (London: Penguin Classics, 1996)
INTERESTING EDITIONS OF Don Juan
Steffan, Truman Guy, and Willis W. Pratt (eds.), Byron’s ‘Don Juan’: A Variorum Edition, 4 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957; 2nd edn, 1971). Text, with textual histories.
Wordsworth, Jonathan (ed.), Don Juan: Cantos I & II (Oxford: Woodstock Press, 1992). Fascimile of the 1819 publication.
Photographic plates, typographical transcriptions and notes let you watch Byron at work:
Cochran, Peter, (ed.), Don Juan IX: Manuscript: A Facsimile of the Original Drafts (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995)
Levine, Alice, and Jerome J. McGann (eds.), Don Juan: Cantos I–IV (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1985)
Nicholson, Andrew (ed.), Don Juan, Cantos VI–VII; Cantos III–IV; Cantos X, XI, XII, and XVII; Cantos XIV and XV (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1989; 1992; 1993; 1995)
CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY VIEWS OF DON JUAN
Arnold, Matthew, ‘Byron’ (preface to Poetry of Byron (1881)), in Essays in Criticism: Second Series (1888). Frequently reprinted.
Chew, Samuel C., Byron in England: His Fame and After-Fame (London: John Murray, 1924). Chapters 4 and 5 on the reception of and several fantasy continuations by divers hands of Don Juan.
Elfenbein, Andrew, Byron and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The emergence and reception of ‘Byronism’ as literary and cultural phenomena.
Hazlitt, William, ‘Lord Byron’, The Spirit of the Age (1825), in P. P. Howe (ed.), The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, 21 vols. (London: J. M. Dent, 1930–34), XI 69–78
Redpath, Theodore (ed.), The Young Romantics and Critical Opinion, 1807–1824: Poetry of Byron, Shelley, and Keats as Seen by Their Contemporary Critics (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1973)
Reiman, Donald H. (ed.), The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers; Part B: Byron and Regency Society Poets, 5 vols. (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1972)
Rutherford, Andrew (ed.), Byron: The Critical Heritage (New York/London: Barnes and Noble/Routledge, 1970)
Soderholm, James, Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996)
Steffan, Truman Guy, and Willis W. Pratt (eds.), ‘A Survey of Commentary on Don Juan’ in Byron’s ‘Don Juan’: A Variorum Edition, Vol. IV, Appendix.
CRITICAL
WRITING ON BYRON, INCLUDING DON JUAN
Beaty, Frederick L., Byron the Satirist (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985). Chapters on Don Juan, 104–64.
Blackstone, Bernard, Byron: A Survey (London: Longman, 1975)
Bone, Drummond (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Lord Byron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Bostetter, Edward E., ‘Byron’, The Romantic Ventriloquists (1963); revised edn (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), pp. 241–301
Christensen, Jerome, Lord Byron’s Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). How ‘Byron’ was constructed and marketed.
Franklin, Caroline, Byron’s Heroines (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Chapters 4 and 5 on Don Juan.
Garber, Frederick, Self, Text, and Romantic Irony: The Example of Byron (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)
Gleckner, Robert F., Byron and the Ruins of Paradise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967)
Graham, Peter W., Lord Byron (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998)
Keach, William, ‘Political Inflection in Byron’s Ottava Rima’, Studies in Romanticism 27 (1988), pp. 551–62
–, ‘ “Words Are Things”: Romantic Ideology and the Matter of Poetic Language’, in George Levine (ed.), Aesthetics and Ideology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), pp. 219–39
Kelsall, Malcolm, Byron’s Politics (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1987). Political principles, political impotence.
Knight, G. Wilson, ‘The Two Eternities: An Essay on Byron’, in The Burning Oracle: Studies in the Poetry of Action (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 199–288.
Levine, Alice, and Robert N. Keane (eds.), Rereading Byron: Essays Selected from Hofstra University’s Byron Bicentennial Conference (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1993)
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