Byron: A Self-Portrait. Letters and Diaries, 1798-1824. Vol. II

1950

Brasch PR4381 A31 1950

London: John Murray

Lord Byron (1788-1824), famous English poet and notorious debauchee, lived in Italy for seven years. He was in residence at his villa in Pisa when he learned of the death by drowning of his dear friend Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley and his wife, Mary (author of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus) had been travelling in Italy since 1818 and eventually settled in Pisa. On the 8th July, 1822 Shelley was sailing his boat Don Juan back from a trip to Livorno, in Tuscany, when it was beset by a storm in the Bay of Spezia and Shelley and his two companions perished. Byron talks of the event in his letter to Irish poet, Thomas Moore (1779-1852).