Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals - Softcover

Marchand's new edition of Byron's letters and diaries is a delight to read. Byron is one of the most versatile and provocative of our letter writers. More perphaps than any other, he has left us a collection of writtings that constitute a brilliant and incisive portrait of their author. Passionate, worldly, businesslike, scurrilous, gossipy, tender, despondent-- the letters exude charm and wayward intelligence, and above all the rippling energy with which this prototype of the Romantic hero lived and worked...In their candor, wit, and perceptiveness, they serve him better than any biographer. Byron's sinewy, funny, electrifying letters are emergency bulletins from a man operating, more often than not, on the extreme edege of despair and disgrace...We begin to read these letters as speedily as he must have written them, held by his scorn, his dissatisfaction with himself and his blazing energy. He is fiercely alive. Byron's letters are among the most spirited in the English language, and are irresistible...Byron is a good letter writer because whether he is scoffing, arguing, or even conducting his business affairs, he has a half-laughing eye on his correspondent; although he can turn icily formal, he has mainly a talking style of worldly elegance. Byron was at all times a performer, and his best performance, we have usually agreed, is Don Juan, the most entertaining long poem in English. We may have to think again. Leslie A. Marchand's new edition of the letters and journals suggests Byron's prose may be his strongest work. These letters play on our nerves and get under our skin in a contemporary way. -- Walter Demons "Newsweek"