BYRON: A LIFE IN TEN LETTERS

A user-friendly biography of the major Romantic poet, framed around some of his most revealing missives.

In his brief life, Byron (1788-1824) exemplified passion and transgression, becoming an icon of British literature despite protests from the likes of William Wordsworth, who argued that Byron’s Don Juan “will do more harm to the English character, than anything of our time.” Between provocative epics and a louche lifestyle involving countless lovers (including his half sister), he earned his place as a man who was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” as his lover Caroline Lamb famously put it. Timed to the 200th anniversary of Byron’s death, this book by Stauffer, president of the Byron Society of America, isn’t a scholarly study filled with fresh research, but nor is it a dumbed-down overview of Byron’s life and career. Though each chapter opens with a key letter from a moment in the poet’s life, it’s not quite a critical study of his writing, either. Rather, it’s a pocket biography that leverages Stauffer’s knowledge well. The author is sensitive to Byron’s insecurities (he was born with a deformed foot), affections (numerous letters concern his seductions and affairs with men and women), and political passions (he died while supporting Greece’s battle for independence). Byron often comes off as smug and amoral, but he could also be sensitive and confessional about his behavior—and, toward the end of his life, eager to pursue something like redemption. “He is becoming what he should be, a virtuous man,” Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in 1821. Stauffer dedicates a fair amount of space to explaining the many references in the letters, but he’s also careful to maintain a lively narrative of Byron’s life, clear about his many flaws but clarifying why he was such a commanding figure.

A well-conceived book and a fine Byron biography for neophytes.