This is an annotated & illustrated edition of the first five Cantos of Byron's comic epic poem, Don Juan, first published by John Murray between 1819 and 1821. It's a tale of the "Odyssey turned inside out" (Peter Cochran)."The most readable poem of its length ever written" according to Virginia Woolf. "By far the greatest comic poem in English," in the view of Germaine Greer.
Please download "Don Juan Cantos I - V", annotated and illustrated (5.5MB).
Please download "Don Juan Cantos I - V", annotated and illustrated (5.5MB).
Thumbnails of Canto introductory pages showing summary tables of "good bits"
Why, then, does the poem need annotations? It doesn't. It's an engaging, often hilarious, tale of bedroom-farce, adventure, misadventure, desert-island romance, pirates, Sultans, houris, cannibalism, seduction and... cross-dressing, mixed with (nearly) equal parts Byron's commentary, confessions and criticism of politicians, taste, war, monarchs, science, poets, history... Better still, Don Juan's verse is impeccable for rhyme and meter. The poem canters on page after page shaping the story, the quips, the jokes, the jibes, the complaints and curses to the unique form of ottava rima: eight rhyming lines with a couplet in the two last that's perfect for a punch-line
Three pages from Canto I showing the layout of notes and illustrations
So why the notes (again)? Mostly because Byron's genius is not always apparent to readers today who have not had the same education in the Greek and Roman classics and who may not recall their 19th Century European political or scientific history or the bitter resentment that Liberals like Byron felt at the "Concert of Europe's" restoration of the same rotten, revanchist monarchic order that Napoleon had briefly crushed. Byron writes passionately and satirically about all of these things. So the notes are mainly to help readers see just what this very clever, passionate, rather conflicted young man (in his early 30s) was getting at. And to demonstrate his genius, of course.
I'm not the only editor of an annotated version of the poem. There have been several annotated editions in the past such as Isaac Asimov's annotated version, illustrated by Milton Glaser, from 1973 (now out of print). Just recently, in 2024, Longmans published a scholarly version edited by Jane Stabler and Gavin Hopps ($600 from Amazon!). But the first of these is now hard to find even in used-book stores and the second is, well... overpriced.
In composing the notes I have drawn on a range of Byron scholars (especially the late Peter Cochran) and editors, as well as on my own researches. I've also added illustrations — more often than not images of `academic' paintings — that sometimes elucidate the verse, sometimes echo it, sometimes just brighten the page.
I'm not the only editor of an annotated version of the poem. There have been several annotated editions in the past such as Isaac Asimov's annotated version, illustrated by Milton Glaser, from 1973 (now out of print). Just recently, in 2024, Longmans published a scholarly version edited by Jane Stabler and Gavin Hopps ($600 from Amazon!). But the first of these is now hard to find even in used-book stores and the second is, well... overpriced.
In composing the notes I have drawn on a range of Byron scholars (especially the late Peter Cochran) and editors, as well as on my own researches. I've also added illustrations — more often than not images of `academic' paintings — that sometimes elucidate the verse, sometimes echo it, sometimes just brighten the page.
I have uploaded the Annotated Cantos I - V to archive.org. I have also made a version that can read by the LLMs
