Don Juan

Lord Byron's satirical masterpiece is published here unabridged and complete for the reader's enjoyment.

First published in 1824 to great fanfare, Lord Byron's Don Juan is a comic reworking of the legend of the same name. In an amusing twist, Byron has Don Juan not as a womaniser, but as a man who easily falls prey to various seductresses. This single alteration gives Byron much opportunity for humour, being as Don Juan's plot is riddled with his affairs with many women.

At the opening of the text Byron famously mocks Robert Southey, a contemporary Romantic poet who held the esteemed title of Poet Laureate for three decades. The barbed verses mock and skewer what Byron viewed as inadequacies in his rival's form, which Byron himself liberally quotes and maligns.

On publication, Don Juan received a generally warm reception for its strident commitment to humour. Although the 'mock-epic' form had several precedents, Byron's efforts were praised for their creativity. Over the years the work would become recognised as one of the foremost achievements of Romantic-era poetry.

Don Juan was authored gradually over the course of several years, coinciding with many of Byron's own adventures and exploits around Europe and the Mediterranean. It is thought the changes of scenery and experience aided Byron in keeping the humour and plot fresh and varied. Although a famously fast writer, the seventeenth stanza of Don Juan was unfinished when Byron died in the spring of 1824, supporting the scholarly view that this epic work was incrementally expanded alongside many of the poet's other, shorter works of verse.