Together with William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats, George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824) was one of the most iconic literary figures of the early Romantic movement. His verse covers a wide range of genres, including large scale narrative poems, sonnets, and satirical quips. Byron led a most adventurous life, which included many romantic affairs and he died fighting in the Greek War of Independence.

There were two major influences on Byron’s poetry. One was the romantic, which he shared with his friends, Coleridge and Shelley; the other was the eighteenth-century Augustan mode, of which Alexander Pope was the greatest master. Byron’s natural facility with rhyme and metre enabled him to be very prolific, and some critics considered that this precocity resulted in a certain shallowness and facile charm. However, much of Byron’s verse displays both philosophic and emotional depth, and in his more satirical work he evinces a sharpness of perception characteristic of his poetic hero, Pope.

This collection contains a wide range of pieces, demonstrating Byron’s versatility in form and expression. Also include is a selection of Byron’s letters to colleagues, friends, and lovers, which show the poet in his more revealing and unguarded moments.