P's Correspondence

The story uses the technique of the false document, common in literature of the period. It purports to transcribe a letter written by a mentally-deranged friend of the writer, identified only by the initial "P." (supposedly to protect his privacy). As presented in the preface, the writer seems to share with the rest of the world the belief that his friend is indeed mad, and publishes the text as an act of kindness rather than out of believing in its veracity. The story begins with the alternate Lord Byron, who in this reality did not die at Missolonghi while joining the Greek War of Independence, but returned to England and underwent a total reversion: from a wild radical to a staunch conservative in politics, from one of the most sexually profligate people of his generation to a faithful husband and religious puritan. In 1845 Byron, in his sixties, is monstrously fat, suffers from gout, and is busy re-writing and self-censoring his Don Juan, expurgating everything which does not fit his new political and religious stance.