Don Leon is a 19th-century poem that claims to be by Lord Byron, and which celebrates homosexual love, makes a plea for tolerance. At the time of its writing, homosexuality and sodomy were capital crimes in Britain, and the nineteenth century saw many men hanged for indulging in homosexual acts.
As Don Leon includes in its narrative and notes several incidents that happened after Lord Byron's 1824 death, it obviously could not have been written by him.[1]
The extended poem is well constructed and extremely well written, showing evidence of a classical education and knowledge of the processes of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, as well as an intimate knowledge of the poet Lord Byron's life, including his youthful homosexual adventures on his travels 1809–11 and his romantic friendship with the beautiful choirboy John Edlestone whilst at University of Cambridge. This has led to the supposition that it may have been written by an intimate friend of Lord Byron's – however not by one who was concerned about his posthumous reputation. It was not common knowledge that the poet was what we would now call bisexual until the twentieth century.
Scholar John Lauritsen was one of those who believed that the poem was written from someone within the Shelley–Byron circle.[2]
However, a more recent, and far stronger claim has been made by scholar Charles Upchurch that at least one author was William Beckford. In 1817, Jeremy Bentham wrote to Beckford, asking that he produce a work that argued against the punishment of men for sex with other men, and which employed classical references to support its argument.[3]
Don Leon was originally believed to have been written in the 1830s. However, it is now believed to have been written at least a decade earlier during the period of significant law reform.