ABSTRACT
Don Juan is Byron’s magnum opus, it is also a masterpiece of European literature. Left unfinished at his death, in total the poem contains sixteen complete cantos, and a fragment of the seventeenth canto consisting of fourteen stanzas. At its most superficial level the poem is concerned with the picaresque adventures of its eponymous hero. As well as being a highly topical public document, Don Juan is a deeply personal and bitter reflection on the failure of Byron’s marriage to Annabelle Milbanke, and an excoriating attack on those who participated on her side in the separation proceedings and attendant scandal in 1816. Don Juan proved to be one of the most contentious poems of the Romantic period and created a storm of protest, especially in regard to its supposed lack of moral probity. Gifford and John Cam Hobhouse, friends of Byron both, advised Murray against publication.
