Don Juan

Byron turns the legend of the great seducer on its head, casting Don Juan not as a predator but as a handsome young man forever swept along by the women who pursue him. Across sixteen cantos of nimble ottava rima, he shipwrecks his hero, strands him in love on a Greek island, sells him into a Turkish harem, sends him to war, and drops him into the bed of Catherine the Great before landing him in hypocritical English society. The plot is almost an excuse; the real pleasure is Byron’s voice, digressing, gossiping, and skewering the poets, politicians, and pieties of his age. Witty, worldly, and gloriously unfinished, it remains his boldest work. Read it free in this PDF and EPUB edition.