Letters; Diaries
book — UK — 0

7.0
By reading this I continued my acquaintance with the genre of memoirs. I gotta admit that reading diaries and letters of a person that you don`t already know by its work seems a bit weird. I haven`t read a single poem by Byron, that`s for sure. On the other hand I`ve read a few books about people interested in Byron ("Arcadia" by Stoppard and "The luxury of exile" by L.Bass are the first two works to come to my mind). As for this book it can probably by described as a novel in letters although it surely ain`t no fiction. Lord Byron himself can be seen this way without all those exterragations historians have put upon him. Basically he was a fine young upper class fellow without much money and with his mind set on women and adventures. In his letters to his friends he`s quite honest and sarcastic, his letters to his lovers don`t come off as particulary honest but probably he meant what he wrote (at least during the writing and probably some ten minutes afterwards). Byron`s travels and the self-chosen exile for the most of his adult life can be understood pretty well. Without a doubt I don`t claim that this book is particulary interesting to read - the witty passages where Byron pokes fun at some of his contemporaries or the times when he tells funny stories in his diaries are a treat but some of the stuff only for biographers isn`t particulary what I want from a book.
2005-07-20
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