Come and celebrate Byron’s birthday by reading and discussing together the poem in which he discovered his humorous poetic voice: the first work in which he used the Italian verse form of ottava rima to bring the characteristic light tone of his conversation and his letters into his poetry. In Beppo, published in 1818, the poet known for his melodramatic romances and gloomy meditations suddenly revealed himself as a witty and chatty raconteur, and this was the voice he chose for Don Juan from 1819.
The session—a reading of extracts from Beppo of about 30 minutes, followed by a discussion of the poem—will be chaired by Ken Robbie, Chairman of the Byron Society, and led by Dr Christine Kenyon Jones, Research Fellow of King’s College London and author of Dangerous to Show: Byron and his Portraits (2020) and Jane Austen & Lord Byron: Regency Relations (2024). Please contact us if you would like to volunteer as a reader for the event.