Don Juan
by Lord Byron
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1819-1824
- Form
- Epic poetry
- Language
- English
- Length
- Long · 650 pp300 to 700 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendDon JuanPenguin Classics, 2004T. G. Steffan, E. Steffan and W. W. Pratt's text with full notes; the standard reading edition.
These links go straight to Amazon and Bookshop.org and earn this site nothing today. Prices are the same either way. How this works.
A comic epic in ottava rima, left unfinished at Byron's death after sixteen cantos. Its Juan is not the seducer of legend but a good-natured young Spaniard whom women seduce. Sent abroad after an affair, he is shipwrecked, rescued by the pirate's daughter Haidée, sold into a Turkish harem, present at the Russian siege of Ismail, taken up by Catherine the Great and dispatched to England, where the poem turns to satire of society and its digressive narrator talks about everything from cannibalism to poetic rivals.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Don Juan are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
