Book Review: "Byron: A Life in Ten Letters" by Andrew Stauffer

If you know me then you know that Lord Byron is one of my favourite poets of all time. Actually, if I think about it, he is my favourite poet of all time (I see you, John Keats and I'm sorry). Since 2024 is the 200th anniversary of the death of Lord Byron it is only apt to release a stunning new biography that gives us all of the stories we know and love from his life. In this book, the author chooses from the thousands of letters Byron sent to give us ten that might let us into the life of the poet more than any of the others. I would like to know how he choose said letters because honestly, I would not be able to choose ten. This book is absolutely fantastic and is by someone who has a genius level of intellect on the poet Lord Byron.

The text opens with the death of Byron for the introduction and how it spread across the western world. It talks about the fact that Byron was not only a major poet, but a celebrity amongst many. This led us into the celebrity worship we know today. As we know, Byron wrote in his diaries that one day '(he) woke up and (he) was famous'. We are told about Byron's burial, a long while after his death. Instead of being buried at the regular poet's corner in Westminster, Byron is buried in the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Hucknall about ten to fifteen minutes worth of driving from the city centre of Nottingham, England.

As we move through the letters, we get more of a taste of Byron through the years, with the first one written almost seventeen years before he died in Greece in 1824. He was yet a young sprite, and at nineteen, far beyond his years in terms of his words. As we move through the book, we get not only these letters but an accompanying narrative of his life in which the author teaches us about not only the Byron we know, but the Byron we don't. I don't think many people who read Byron are suprised by how outré his life was, but if you are then I ask you to read this book because it will show you what kind of a man did such things. He was not just a rockstar of his time, but he knew he was one of the great minds of literature and of philosophy.

I have always thought of Byron as one of the precursors of aestheticism, the philosophy of ars gratia artis practised by the late Oscar Wilde. In this, we have a certain hedonism which is reflected in Byron's fantastical tales of sexual appetite whilst drinking wine from the skull of a monk. A reverence only equalled by perhaps Dorian Gray or Anne Rice's Lestat de Lioncourt. I think it is important though to read Byron's letters as well as his poetry because only then do you see that the Byronic Heroism is exclusive to the poems.

Byron's letter writing is filled with fancy prose, but where it is not, it is of poor writing quality and more than often, not as witty as the great poet. Through the device of these ten letters therefore, we can get back to treating Byron like a human being. This is something I love about this book because I have read so many Byron-ographies in my time and yet, nobody has ever made him so human.

Throughout this book, the letters detail Byron as a many of many personalities. He is both vulenerable and yet has enough confidence in himself to go travelling around Europe in a carriage based on that designed for Napoleon Bonaparte. After this, we have the brilliance of Byron's mind as he tries to get the grips of writing and becoming a major celebrity - he holds incredible public face whilst also holding a grand amount of private face. He revels in the character he has been made to portray, even if it is 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. He tries pushing those boundaries a little bit further each time which unfortunately, when he is 36 in Greece, results in his death.

All in all, I think this book details Byron perfectly and that the author has chosen some great letters to cover. For those of you who haven't yet read a Byron-ography, this is a great place to start.