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Was Lord Byron aware of how Napoleon felt about him?
Efforts to find documents establishing Napoleon's feelings towards Lord Byron prove that this information is largely unavailable. Also, most publications addressing the emperor are limited editions and none of the scholars mention any sentiments or feelings that he might have had toward Byron or his works. While there is no preexisting information to fully answer your question, an academic article of the public research university, University of Gdansk, agree that it is not clear whether “he ever knew anything, or evinced any curiosity about, Byron.”
Below we’ve used the available data to pull together key findings and a possible route of research.
Napoleon and Literature
Napoleon Bonaparte has been recognized by scholars as a “voracious reader.” He read French, and Italian classics, as well as some English work in translation.
During the siege of Toulon, he undertook a vast program of reading that filled most of his leisure. Two of his secretaries (Meneval and Fain) record in their work that during a long spell of concentrated efforts, he would “turn to books as a relief.” Although these readings had covered a variety of topics, his chief interest was in books of historical and political importance.
Some of his lifelong favorite authors include Plutarch, Homer, and Ossian. The memoir of Fain reveals that the emperor’s reading, if not taste, was Catholic.
Napoleon once confessed to the wife of British Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm that he admired Ossian’s poems very much. He said he had been accused on several occasions of having his head “filled with Ossian’s clouds.”
Arnault in his memoir recalls that during a voyage, “Napoleon kept the poems of Ossian by his bedside, his favorite among them, being 'Temora' which he often read aloud to Arnault.”
Napoleon and Byron
Lord Byron was a popular English poet who greatly admired Napoleon and wrote poems about him. Thomas Medwin records, “Lord Byron admired Napoleon, as Napoleon himself admired Corneille.”
According to the International Napoleonic Society, both men were extremely superstitious and inspired “exceptional loyalty among subordinates.” “Both read history by preference and liked to compare themselves with the great of the past, Napoleon with Alexander, Byron with figures from Diogenes to Rousseau, not forgetting the Emperor himself.”
Although Byron had admired and shared some similarities with him, it is not clear whether Napoleon admired him or even read his work.
Most of Byron’s work appeared in French in 1816, by which time Napoleon had been exiled to the South Atlantic. However, he did read a translated version of the Hundred Days by Byron’s friend J.C. Hobhouse, an important book about the last campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. When the book had been published in 1817, he got a copy of it while imprisoned. Although the book addressed Lord Byron, whether “he ever knew anything or evinced any curiosity about, Byron is not clear.”
Lastly, although there is information about Lord Byron's feelings towards Napoleon, it is not clear whether Napoleon admired, evinced any curiosity about or even read his work. Yet, Napoleon admired Ossian’s poems very much, his favorite among them, being 'Temora'.