Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to John Murray, 20 January 1818
“Venice, January 20th, 1819.
* * * * *
“The opinions which I have asked of Mr. H. and others were with regard to the poetical
merit, and not as to what they may think due to the cant of the day, which still reads
the Bath Guide, Little’s Poems, Prior, and Chaucer, to say nothing
of Fielding and Smollet. If published, publish entire, with the above-mentioned
exceptions; or you may publish anonymously, or not at all. In the latter event, print 50 on my account, for private
distribution.
“Yours, &c.
“I have written to Messrs.
K. and H. to desire that they
will not erase more than I have stated.
“The Second Canto of Don Juan is finished in 206 stanzas.”
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 c.-1400)
English Poet, the author of
The Canterbury Tales (1390 c.).
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
English dramatist, essayist, and novelist; author of
Joseph
Andrews (1742) and
The History of Tom Jones (1749).
John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published
Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as
Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Matthew Prior (1664-1721)
English poet and statesman successful in both comic and serious verse collected in
Poems on Several Occasions (1718).
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Scottish physician and man of letters; author of the novels
Roderick
Random (1747) and
Humphry Clinker (1771).
George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Don Juan. (London: 1819-1824). A burlesque poem in ottava rima published in installments: Cantos I and II published in
1819, III, IV and V in 1821, VI, VII, and VIII in 1823, IX, X, and XI in 1823, XII, XIII,
and XIV in 1823, and XV and XVI in 1824.
