Description

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A new hardcover selection of Lord Byron's letters, poems, and journals, tracing his dramatic, scandalous, heroic life and his wide-ranging travels—and timed to the two-hundredth anniversary of his tragic early death

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was one of the leading figures of British Romanticism. The Byronic hero he gave his name to—the charming, dashing, rebellious outsider—remains a powerful literary archetype. Byron was known for his unconventional character and his extravagant and flamboyant lifestyle: he had numerous scandalous love affairs, including with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Lady Caroline Lamb, one of his lovers, famously described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know."

His letters and journals were originally published in two volumes; this new one-volume selection includes poems and provides a vivid overview of his dramatic life arranged to reflect his travels through Scotland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Albania, Switzerland, and of course Greece, where he died. It contains a new introduction by scholar Fiona Stafford highlighting Byron’s enduring significance and the ways in which he was ahead of his time.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Each title includes an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

About the Author

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GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824) was born in London; at the age of ten, upon his father's death, he became the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale. Forced to leave England in the wake of scandal, he spent years living in Italy and elsewhere in Europe; he died at Missolonghi in Greece after contracting a fever while fighting with the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire.

FIONA STAFFORD is a professor of English literature at Oxford University. The author of many books, including a biography of Jane Austen, she also wrote and presented the highly acclaimed "The Meaning of Trees" for BBC Radio 3's The Essay. Her book The Long, Long Life of Trees, published in 2017, was a Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year.