Don Juan

by Byron, Lord George Gordon; Gordon, George; Steffan, T. G.

• ISBN13: 9780140422160
• ISBN10: 0140422161
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1988-07-05
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

In this rambling, exuberant, conversational poem, the travels of Don Juan are used as a vehicle for some of the most lively and acute commentaries on human societies and behaviour in the language. The manner is what Goethe called 'a cultured comic language' - a genre which he regarded as not possible in German and which he felt Byron managed superbly. This edition is itself a significant contribution to Byron scholarship. The editors have been able to draw on their authoritative edition of the poem published by the University of Texas Press. The extensive annotation covers points of difficulty, selected variant readings and a mass of information on the historical allusions which Byron wove into the poem. Book jacket.

Author Biography

George Gordon Byron was born on January 22, 1788 and he inherited the barony in 1798. He went to school in Dulwich, and then in 1801 to Harrow. In 1805 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, later gaining a reputation in London for his startling good looks and extravagant behavior. His first collection of poems, Hours of Idleness (1807), was not well received, but with the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) he became famous overnight and increased this fame with a series of wildly popular ‘Eastern Tales’. In 1815 he married the heiress Annabella Milbanke, but they were separated after a year. Byron shocked society by the rumored relationship with his half-sister, Augusta, and in 1816 he left England forever. He eventually settled in Italy, where he lived for some time with Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli. He supported Italian revolutionary movements and in 1823 he left for Greece to fight in its struggle for independence, but he contracted a fever and died at Missolonghi in 1824.

Byron’s contemporary popularity was based first on Childe Harold and the ‘Tales’, and then on Don Juan (1819-24), his most sophisticated and accomplished writing. He was one of the strongest exemplars of the Romantic movement, and the Byronic hero was a prototype widely imitated in European and American literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 7
Genesis of the Poem	p. 7
This Edition	p. 10
Acknowledgements	p. 15
Reprints 1977, 1982	p. 15
Table of Dates	p. 17
Further Reading	p. 26
Motto to Cantos I-V	p. 35
Preface to Cantos I and II	p. 37
Dedication	p. 41
Canto I	p. 46
Canto II	p. 102
Canto III	p. 157
Canto IV	p. 189
Canto V	p. 219
Motto to Cantos VI-XVI	p. 259
Preface to Cantos VI-VIII	p. 261
Canto VI	p. 264
Canto VII	p. 295
Canto VIII	p. 317
Canto IX	p. 353
Canto X	p. 375
Canto XI	p. 397
Canto XII	p. 420
Canto XIII	p. 443
Canto XIV	p. 471
Canto XV	p. 497
Canto XVI	p. 522
Canto XVII	p. 555
Notes	p. 559
Abbreviations	p. 561
Appendix	p. 756
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