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Article: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: a Romaunt and the Influence of Local Attachment.
- Article from:
- Texas Studies in Literature and Language
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byron's poetic success story began at Janina in October 1809. This was the date Byron started to write Childe Harold, on a tour through the Levant. Of that poem Byron wrote, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." (1) "The effect," wrote Moore, "was electric... 'Childe Harold' and Lord Byron became the theme of every tongue." (2) On publication in March 1812, the quarto edition of five hundred copies sold out in just three days, running into ten subsequent editions in three years. It was a poem that Byron felt able to summon in 1817 as "my best." (3)
The poem is written in the Spenserian stanza. Walter Scott, who penned a contemporaneous Spenserian poem in ...