Byron's Letters and Journals: A New Selection (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780198722557)

Alongside Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron possesses a star-quality unlike other classic British authors. His life as poet, philanderer, homosexual, and freedom fighter is legendary, and this new selection from his powerful letters and journals tells the story from the inside, in Byron's own racy and passionate style. Though Byron is chiefly known as a poet, his letters and journals are one of the glories of English prose literature, and one of the greatest British acts of autobiography, alongside Pepys' Diary and Boswell's Journal. This new selection, taken from the authoritative and unbowdlerized edition prepared by Leslie Marchand in the 1970s, not only provides the cream of his informal prose; it amounts to a biography in Byron's own words. No other English writer lived so remarkable an existence, from rented rooms in Aberdeen to a Nottinghamshire peerage, from European fame to English infamy, and notorious Italian exile to a glorious death in the Greek War of Independence.The letters and journals are selected, introduced, and annotated to provide a running narrative of the life and career of his remarkable man in his own unmistakable words.

Author: Richard Lansdown
ISBN-10: 0198722559
ISBN-13: 9780198722557
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 06/23/2015
Pages: 552
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2016