
Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume VI: ‘The flesh is frail,’ 1818–1819
Edited by Leslie A. Marchand
Harvard University Press books are not shipped directly to India due to regional distribution arrangements. Buy from your local bookstore, Amazon.co.in, or Flipkart.com.
This book is not shipped directly to country due to regional distribution arrangements.
Pre-order for this book isn't available yet on our website.
This book is currently out of stock.
Dropdown items
ISBN 9780674089464
Publication date: 01/01/1976
George Gordon Byron was a superb letter-writer: almost all his letters, whatever the subject or whoever the recipient, are enlivened by his wit, his irony, his honesty, and the sharpness of his observation of people. They provide a vivid self-portrait of the man who, of all his contemporaries, seems to express attitudes and feelings most in tune with the twentieth century. In addition, they offer a mirror of his own time. This first collected edition of all Byron’s known letters supersedes Prothero’s incomplete edition at the turn of the century. It includes a considerable number of hitherto unpublished letters and the complete text of many that were bowdlerized by former editors for a variety of reasons. Prothero’s edition included 1,198 letters. This edition has more than 3,000, over 80 percent of them transcribed entirely from the original manuscripts.
Byron’s epistolary saga continues con brio in this volume. At the start of 1818 he sends off the last canto of Childe Harold and abandons himself to the debaucheries of the Carnival in Venice. At the close of 1819 he resolves to return to England but instead follows Teresa Guiccioli to Ravenna. In the meantime he writes three long poems and two cantos of Don Juan, whose bowdlerization he violently protests; he breaks off with Marianna Segati, copes with his amorous “tigress” Margarita Cogni, then falls passionately in love with the young Countess Guiccioli; he thinks seriously of emigrating to South America; he takes custody of his little daughter Allegra and becomes increasingly fond of the child. The Shelleys visit him, as does Thomas Moore, to whom he entrusts his memoirs (burned after his death). The letters to friends are a marvelous outpouring of funny anecdotes, practical talk, discussions of his poems, statements of his beliefs. The love letters are in a class by themselves.
Author
- The late Leslie A. Marchand was Professor of English, Emeritus, Rutgers University. For his lifelong work on Byron, he was given the National Book Critics Circle's Ivan Sandrof Award.
Book Details
- 306 pages
- 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches
- Belknap Press
From this author
-
-
Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume XI: ‘For freedom’s battle,’ 1823–1824
George Gordon Byron, Leslie A. Marchand -
Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume X: ‘A heart for every fate,’ 1822–1823
George Gordon Byron, Leslie A. Marchand -
Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume IX: ‘In the wind’s eye,’ 1821–1822
George Gordon Byron, Leslie A. Marchand -
Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume VIII: ‘Born for opposition,’ 1821
George Gordon Byron, Leslie A. Marchand
Recommendations
-
The Island
Nicholas Jenkins -
The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel -
On Not Being Someone Else
Andrew H. Miller -
When Novels Were Books
Jordan Alexander Stein -
Spenserian Moments
Gordon Teskey