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26 of 27 found the following review helpful:
 How the serpent's voice sounded to Eve Sep 18, 2007
By Neutiquam Erro
All passion, intensity and fire, Byron cuts a swathe through the Regency era's lights, literature and ladies. He does so in a style that is the most beautiful and high prose you will ever read; magnificent curving arcs of words that could have come straight from the proud mouth of an archangel (or Lucifer himself). Of course, he occasionally descends into petty back-stabbing, misogyny and generally seems to be a bit of a spoilt child with too much time on his hands, but you can forgive him that just for Childe Harold's Pilgrimage alone.
This book claims to contain most of Lord Byron's major works and it certainly is a full volume, weighing in at over 1000 pages in paperback format. The larger works include the above-mentioned Pilgrimage and Don Juan. These take up at least 700 pages themselves. The remaining space is occupied by Manfred - a rather Nietzschean work about a magician; the Giaour - a tale of unrepentant love and loss; Mazeppa - a story of a man whose fortunes fall and rise dramatically; Beppo - a Venetian affaire de cour; Cain - an intense retelling of the biblical tale with Manichean overtones, and assorted shorter poems. There are also fifty pages of assorted correspondence with various individuals. The book comes equipped with a very short introduction (for a book of 1000 pages), a chronology of Byron's life, an index and end notes. There is very little in the way of explanation of why pieces are included and the end notes are mostly helpful but often explain the obvious while leaving the obscure, obscure. If you like books that contain no analysis, this is for you, but if you want things explained you will do better with something else.
Personally, I preferred the intensity and vision of Childe Harold, Cain and the Giaour to the more sarcastic and occasionally contrived style of Don Juan. Byron is at his best describing beauty - be it nature, art or woman. And much, if not all, of what he writes about is related to the fairer sex. You should write what you know about, they say, and Byron certainly knew women - in both the intellectual and biblical sense. His love affairs raged across all of Europe and brought him condemnation from his peers - particularly his dalliance with his half-sister. His books are full of the worship of the beauty of women and he objectifies them in a way that is entirely politically incorrect in our day and age and likely was then as well. If you can get past the fact that he seems like a teenage boy in rut most of the time, his descriptive powers, characterization, wit, sheer beauty and nobility of expression are sure to please.
15 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 Not a well made book... Nov 07, 2008
By E. E. Mort
The text is nice enough but I guess you get what you pay for and there is no way the books ultra cheep constructions gets you through its 1120 pages... just like the other two Oxford World Press books I ordered with this one. Really, $0.08 more a book to put a sturdy cover on it please?!?!?
12 of 17 found the following review helpful:
the shining star of Romanticism Jul 02, 2004
By I ain't no porn writer
Lord Byron was perhaps the most dazzling and influential figure of the Romantic movement. He was certainly the most colorful, controversial, and celebrated poet of his time. His poetic style is controlled, yet the sentiments expressed are passionate. He can be sad and despairing in one stanza, then ecstatically happy in the next, and it is these impulsive mood swings which made him no less contradictory in his beliefs and actions. He wrote some wonderful lyrical poems, but my favorite are his long poems, like "Don Juan." He is and was a captivating personality and a brilliant poet.David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
It's a Rare Occurrence, but Penguin Wins Over Oxford Jan 22, 2012
By Suzanne
I generally prefer the Oxford World's Classics series to Penguin's editions of the same works and authors. Why? Because Oxford boasts better (thicker) paper, better fonts, better printing, better covers, usually better notes and better introductions... Oxford just seems to present an overall better product at roughly equivalent prices. But Oxford made a crucial mistake in their edition of Lord Byron: The Major Works--they didn't give Don Juan a separate volume. The effect of stuffing Don Juan into this volume means that the book is conflated to an unwieldy 1100+ pages, and several of Byron's key poems are either omitted or severely abridged (like Lara and The Corsair). Here, they really should've followed Penguin's lead in creating separate volumes for Don Juan and another for Byron's other poetry. But it's even worse when one considers that the Oxford contains a sampling of Byron's prose. So after you subtract the pages for Don Juan and the prose, you're left with only about 470 pages of Byron's other poetry in compared to Penguin's 780.
Now, granted, perhaps what's available here in the Oxford Edition will be enough for many readers, and it does still provide its usual advantages in paper, printing, font, notes, and intros. Byron was incredibly prolific, but like most prolific poets he tended to produce more bad poetry than good/great poetry. It's just a numbers thing; writing great poetry takes time and attention to small details. It's why it took Milton years to write Paradise Lost at a rate of 40-or-so lines a day. Every detail had to be worked out. At Byron's best he was as good as anybody, and his skill combined with his unique philosophical worldview makes him endlessly provocative, compelling, and readable, even at his worst. Byron didn't believe in Pope's maxim about how the real art of poetry was in rewriting and perfecting what one had written. He rarely tried to better his drafts, preferring to move on to the next project. I think this approach works best in his longer works where minor imperfections in the verse--be they occasionally bland, prose-like formulations, awkward meter, et al.--were less noticeable when set against the macro vision of the narrative and characters.
But, in light of realizing that Byron was at his best in the longer pieces, it's precisely those that are hurt most in The Oxford Edition. Lara and The Corsair are essential Byron, even if they're not as great as Don Juan or Child Harold's Pilgrimage, and they're almost non-existent here. And lesser (but still quality) works like The Siege of Corinth and The Prisoner of Chillon are gone entirely. So, I'll leave it up to each individual customer to decide if the Oxford's usual strengths compensate for the loss of these works. Another option is the Norton Critical Edition, which is more valuable for its critical apparatus than for the poetry itself.
7 of 11 found the following review helpful:
Byron yesterday and Byron today Jan 14, 2005
By Shalom Freedman
"Shalom Freedman"
Byron was the god of his age. He was worshipped throughout Europe .Today that glory has largely faded and his place in the pantheon of literary greats is somewhat diminished. With Byron there too is the question of the sensational personal life and the heroic role he adopted for himself as revolutionary liberator in Greece's war of independence. As for the poetry I doubt that too many read ' Childe Harold ' with the kind of hunger and enthusiasm it was read in Byron's time. But Byron is an incredible lyricist and there is great poetry in his canon. ' He is a figure of great passion and power, the arch- romantic hero including the demonish mysterious side. For me the total works of Byron are not to be chewed and digested but to be skimmed and tasted. There is much beauty in them.
'She walks in beauty like the night / of cloudless climes and starry skies/ And all that's best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes: / Thu mellowed to that tender light/ Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
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