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The Poetry of Lord ByronHere is a rarity: an ambitious project to present the entire body of Lord Byron's poetry in audiobook form. And yes, it's going to take us a while! The first two volumes are in release; you'll find details on the Lord Byron page. The third volume is in progress, and you'll find information about it right here as soon as it's released. The idea is to follow his development as a poet, partly chronologically, partly thematically. So, for example, the poems he published in his first four books are grouped together in volumes one, two, and three of this series. Then we'll move on to his satires, and then to Childe Harold, and so forth through his amazingly prolific career. It's going to be a fascinating journey! So, what's on which volume? Which poems have been recorded where?For your convenience, we've provided a complete track listing of the set to date in PDF format. This list includes all the volumes we've finished--just bear in mind that some of what we've finished might not be released yet! |
The Poetry of Lord ByronThe Poetry of Lord Byron Volume I: Fugitive PiecesGeorge Gordon, later Lord Byron, published Fugitive Pieces in 1806 when he was only 18 years old. It was printed, but Byron's friends, particularly Reverend Thomas Beecher, advised him that it contained poems that were scandoulsly amorous, particularly the poem "To Mary". Byron suppressed it by having all the copies destroyed - or so he thought. As it happened, Thomas Beecher himself kept his copy, and there were three other copies that were not destroyed. Reverend Beecher's opnion was certainly correct, though his advice was inexcusable. The amorous poetry in this volume, particularly "To Mary", is some of the most erotic serious poetry in English up to that time. Byron was an intensely emotional, intensely sexual young man, and his poetry shows it very clearly. It also shows the work of a young man with the makings of not only a serious poet, but a skillful satirist and humorist as well. While many of the poems are deeply romantic, indeed rather melodramatic effusions of the sort one would expect from the young man who would become a founder of the Romantic movement, others read more like Ogden Nash - witty, lively and skillfully done in happy, bouncing rhymes and meters, not at all what one might expect. This recording of the volume Fugitive Pieces is based on the original volume as later published in limited-edition form. For that reason, the reader who knows Byron's poetry well will notice that some of the texts used here differ, sometimes markedly, from the versions more commonly found. Byron revised and republished these early poems several times under several titles, most notably Pieces on Various Occasions and Hours of Idleness. Later titles in this series, which aims to present the whole of Byron's poetry, will use the later versions of these same poems. In some cases the two versions are nearly identical. |
The Poetry of Lord Byron Volume II: Hours of IdlenessFor those who love Byron's poetry, the value of this work is not so much the poetry itself as the promise of what is to come, it is fascinating to see how his power as a poet is constantly growing and to see how his enormously romantic heart and soul goes about fashioning itself. Though a young man, he often writes as if he were old, musing on days gone by, especially his schoolboy life at Harrow. He tries his hand at several genres: classical translation, narrative poetry, love poetry, philosophical musings. George Gordon, Lord Byron, published his first book of poetry in 1806 when he was only 18 years old. However, Byron suppressed it by having all the copies destroyed - or so he thought. There were four copies that were not destroyed. However, Byron later republished almost all of those poems, and added more, in January 1807, under the title Poems on Various Occasions. Then, in the early summer of 1807, he republished most of those poems and added still more, under the title of Hours of Idleness. And finally, in 1808, he went through the process again, selecting some of the poems he had already published and adding a few more; this time, the title was Poems Original and Translated. As if that isn't complicated enough, he also changed the texts of most of the poems each time around, sometimes only slightly, other times quite significantly. It would be unfair to ask the listener to buy multiple copies of the same poem. Furthermore, within the confines of an audiobook, it is just not possible to trace all the changes Byron made in the poems. Therefore, this recording is a collection of the poems included in the 1807 and 1808 publications, and does not include the poems published in 1806--those are all in Volume I of this series--and it uses the last version of each poem as Byron finally left it after any and all revisions. |
