Description

John Cam Hobhouse, later Lord Broughton (1786-1869), became a friend of Byron when they were at Cambridge, and was frequently his travelling companion. He first published an account of their journey to Albania and Greece in 1814, and reissued this updated and corrected two-volume version in 1855, after his retirement from public life. (His memoirs are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.) In September 1809 Byron and Hobhouse were in Malta, and took the opportunity of a passing ship to go to Preveza in Epirus, making their way to the court of Ali Pasha, the 'tyrant of Ioannina'. Travelling further into Greece, they arrived in Athens, and then crossed to Asia Minor, where they had an audience at Istanbul with Sultan Mahmud II. During this period, Byron was writing Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: on its publication in 1812, as he said, 'I awoke one morning and found myself famous'.