The source code for this HTML page contains only Latin-1 characters, but it directs the browser to display some special characters. The original work contained a few phrases or lines of Greek text. These are represented here as Greek letters, for example Οῖμοι. If the mouse is held still over such phrases, a transliteration in Beta-code pops up. Aside from Greek letters, the only special characters displayed are a few letters e and i with a breve or macron. Two special characters that are not supported by Unicode are displayed in bracket notation: [=N][=C] stands for N and C with heavy macrons.

An important feature of this edition is its copious footnotes. Footnotes are indicated by small raised keys in brackets; these are links to the footnote's text. Footnotes indexed with arabic numbers (e.g. [17], [221]) are informational. Any text in square brackets is the work of editor E.H. Coleridge. Unbracketed note text is by Byron himself. Footnotes indexed with letters (e.g. [c], [bf]) document variant forms of the text from manuscripts and other sources.

In the original, footnotes were printed at the foot of the page on which they were referenced, and their indices started over on each page. In this etext, footnotes have been collected at the ends of each section, and have been numbered consecutively throughout.

Navigation aids are provided as follows. Page numbers are displayed at the right edge of the window. To jump directly to page nn, append #Page_nn to the document URL. To jump directly to the text of footnote xx, either search for [xx] or append #Footnote_xx to the document URL.

Within the blocks of footnotes, numbers in braces such as {321} represent the page number on which following notes originally appeared. These numbers are also preserved as HTML anchors of the form Note_321. To find notes originally printed on page nn, either search for the string {nn} or append #Note_nn to the document URL.

The following corrections were made in the course of transcribing the original text: On page 78 the premiere date for Manfred was corrected from "1384" to "1834" and the spelling of "Tschaikowsky" was corrected from "Tschairowsky." Although the text of a List of Illustrations is included in this etext, the illustrations themselves were not available.