Selected Poems Read Online

1818

Writes ‘My dear Mr Murray’. Beppo published in February, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV in April (including stanzas on the death of the Princess).

Venice Carnival, dissipations, etc. Byron leases a palazzo on the Grand Canal and begins Don Juan in July; spends much time with the Shelleys, encounters Contessa Teresa Guiccioli Allera comes to Venice with her nurse

Keats’s Endymion, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam, Scott’s Rob Roy and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein published; a scathing review of Endymion in the Quarterly. European Alliance; Habeas Corpus Act restored in England.

1819

Mazeppa and Ode to Venice published in June, Don Juan I-II in July, anonymously, and then pirated, to Murray’s distress. Works on Don Juan III. All four cantos of Childe

Harold’s Pilgrimage published together. Venice Carnival, etc. Byron visits the Guicciolis in Ravenna and Bologna; begins affair with Teresa and at her request writes The Prophecy of Dante; gives his memoirs to Thomas Moore in October. Teresa’s husband and her father, Count Gamba, try to end her liaison with Byron; in November, she returns to Ravenna with her husband. On Christmas Eve Byron joins Teresa at Ravenna.

Wordsworth’s Peter Bell and The Waggoner, Polidori’s The Vampyre, Scott’s The Heart of Mid-Lothian and Hemans’s Tales and Historical Scenes published. Scathing review of The Revolt of Islam in the Quarterly, with a vicious attack on Shelley’s character.

‘Peterloo massacre’ in August; Six Acts passed in December; birth of Queen Victoria. Shelley writes The Mask of Anarch.

1820

Byron and Allegra live with Teresa and her husband; Byron’s and Teresa’s liaison continues. Byron becomes involved in the Italian Revolution against Austrian rule (the Carbonari movement) through Teresa’s brother. Teresa is officially separated from her husband in July and goes to live with her father; Byron visits frequently. Sends Allegra to live in the country. Working on Don Juan III–V, translates ‘Francesca of Rimini’ from Dante’s Inferno, Canto V.

Death of George III; the Regent becomes George IV.

Dissolution of Parliament, Cato Street Conspiracy in England. Queen Caroline tried for adultery; Byron involved in seeking Italian witnesses for her.

Royalist reactions throughout Europe; revolution in Spain and Portugal.

Murray publishes an eight-volume edition of Byron’s poems (1818–20). Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant published and suppressed; his Prometheus Unbound and Other Poems, The Cenci, Hemans’s The Sceptic, Clare’s Poems Descriptive of Rural Life, Wordsworth’s Memorials of a Tour on the Continent and The River Duddon, and Keats’s Lamia volume published. The London Magazine and John Bull founded.

1821

Byron begins his journal. Marino Faliero and The Prophecy of Dante published in April; when Don Juan III–V is published in August, Murray’s premises are mobbed by booksellers’ messengers; Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari and Cain are published together in December. After Southey publishes A Vision of Judgement with its attack on the Satanic school, Byron retaliates with The Vision of Judgment. Sends Murray The Blues in August. Marino Faliero flops on the London stage.

The Gambas (Teresa’s family) are expelled from Romagna in July and banished to Pisa; Byron and the Gambas join the Shelleys and others of the ‘Pisan circle’ by November. Allegra is sent to a convent school.

Deaths of Napoleon, Queen Caroline and Keats (in Rome, February); Shelley’s Adonais hooted at in Blackwood’s; Baillie’s Metrical Legends published.