Dr. Kate Lister

But he had been publishing poetry before that.

So he publishes small collections of poems which are relatively well received apart from one or two people that slag it off.

And he gets so upset that he's been badly criticised by one or two people that his next volume of poetry is one just attacking English and Scottish critics.

He just absolutely goes to town and rips them to shreds.

He just goes on the offensive.

We've all been there.

We've all been there.

Right?

But you're not supposed to respond to criticism.

You're supposed to be dignified and rise above it.

And he publishes this entire collection of just basically going, yeah, well, you're all dicks and idiots and I'm a genius.

That's pretty much what he does.

And then he swans off to Europe.

But it's there that he writes his big hit and it's called Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

And it's about a young man who goes to Greece and to Turkey and

and explores and experiences emotional awakening and it's all erotic.

And funnily enough, people thought that that might have been semi-autobiographical.

So the world just goes nuts for this.

It was called Byronomania at the time.

And this collection of, it sounds so strange now, a collection of poems would do that because I don't remember the last time a collection of poems would do that.