Byron's Spanish Afterlives: Emilio Castelar's Vida de Lord Byron

This article examines Emilio Castelar's Vida de Lord Byron (1873), the first Spanish biography of Byron. Borrowing most information from Moore's and, especially, Lescure's biographies of the poet, Castelar provides an apologetic and over-romantic portrait of Byron, in which he tries to reconstruct his private life and inner self, depicting him as a tragic hero who, despite his excesses, should be recognised as a universal genius. Castelar's biography, which became an immediate success, illustrates the keen interest that Byron still aroused in Spain in the late nineteenth century and it deserves to be considered in the study of Spanish Byronism, a cultural phenomenon that includes but should not be limited to the literary reception of his poetry.