Abstract
Until Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–18), Byron was on the edge of fame. He broke this barrier through his European Tour (1809–11) which provided inspiration for the famous poem. Whilst extending social boundaries, through his meeting with Ali Pasha, Byron expanded the itinerary of the traditional ‘Grand Tour’ to include land, like Albania, previously unmarked by British boots. Byron mirrors his pioneering travel practices in his fiction. On the edges of Childe Harold are footnotes that cover anthropological, topographical, and autobiographical ground, advancing cultural understanding of areas either neglected or misrepresented by previous writers. I argue that, through revisions of these footnotes, Byron sought to dispel and correct myths relating to obscure European nations, perpetuated by ‘irresponsible’ accounts of previous travellers and in doing so strove to educate his readership on the benefits of informed, reasoned debates, built on empirical knowledge. This article establishes a link between Byron's poetry and politics to assess how far his demand for objectivity in literature bled into his political ambitions.
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