For the first time all Byron's miscellaneous prose writings are collected together, including his speeches in the House of Lords, short stories, reviews, critical articles, and Armenian translations, as well as such shorter pieces as memoranda, notes, reminiscences, and marginalia. Although some of this material has been published before - most notably in the appendices to Prothero's edition of the Letters and Journals (1898-1901) - a considerable proportion is here
published for the first time.
For the first time too, the prose works are presented with full scholarly apparatus. The texts are reproduced from their original manuscripts wherever these are still extant; and the notes provide an introduction to each item, detailing the circumstances of its composition, its publication history, and its historical and literary background, as well as providing comprehensive annotation of individual points of obscurity, allusions, and other matters of content.


Volume IV of this edition of Byron's poetical works covers the period from the middle of 1816, when Byron left England, to the end of 1820. During this first phase of his exile years he wrote some of his most important and innovative work, including Manfred, Beppo, Mazeppa, and the Morgante Maggiore. These were the works, and this was the period, in which Byron moved toward the project that was to become his masterwork, Don Juan. Seventy-one poems are included in this volume, of which ten are collected in complete form for the first time. In addition, a large number of the poems have heretofore been printed in corrupted or non-authoritative texts, many of them among Byron's most well-known works such as Manfred and "To the Po". The texts are based on a return to, and a systematic analysis of, all the early textual documents, including all known manuscripts, proofs, and early editions. Copious notes and commentaries supplement the editorial apparatus, so that the entire context of these works--textual, biographical, social, historical--is elucidated as it has never been in any previous edition.



The Complete Poetical Works Volume 3


NB - VOL VII HAS THE BLURB FOR BOTH VOLS - ELSP89 This volume is the penultimate one in the Oxford English Texts Byron, described by Ian Jack as 'one of the finest editions we have of any of the Romantic poets'. It contains all the works of 1821 and 1822, including all Byron's late plays - The Two Foscari, Sardanapalus, Cair: A Mystery, (publication of which gave rise to threats of prosecution against the publisher, John Murray), and the unfinished The Deformed Transformed. As usual, the works are given with textual annotation at the foot of the page, and there is a full introdution and extensive annotation at the end of the volume.

This volume completes the Oxford English Texts edition of Byron's Poetical Works. Included here are the poems from the last two years of Byron's life, 1823-4, when he decided to leave Italy to join the Greeks in their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. Three major works date from this period - the neglected late satire, The Age of Bronze; Byron's treatment of the Bounty mutiny, The Island; and his greatest lyric poem, `January 22nd 1824. Messalonghi. On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year.' Several new poems are added to the corpus, two in the regular sequence of works set down in 1980, and three others in Appendix C.

An important feature of this volume is its set of appendices dealing with the corpus of Byron's work. Of special signficance are those detailing all relevant information about attributed and spurious Byron poems. This material is important not only for establishing a reliable corpus of the work, but also as a fundamental resource for the study of the Byron legend. Included here are the texts of newly authenticated poems and of attributed poems which have some reasonable claim to authenticity, as well as a list of unauthentic poems. The latter augments the list given in Volume I of this edition. This material is followed by a discussion of Byron forgeries; and a list of corrections and additions to Volumes I-V.

This volume also contains comprehensive indexes of titles, of first lines, and of all the poems by volume and page number, and a general index.