Byron: Selected Poetry (Poetry Library, Penguin)

This edition presents the most comprehensive selection of Byron's poetry and prose ever collected in a single volume. The poetry section includes the complete texts of his masterpieces, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan, as well as representative examples of his satires, tales, plays, and short poems. Among the selected prose entries are letters, journal excerpts, essays, and other formal prose. These texts are, in every case, based on the most recent and authoritative editorial work, and incorporate many corrections to both poetry and prose. Byron offers readers the unique opportunity to appreciate the dual literary achievement of one of the romantic period's most flamboyant and most influential artists.

George Gordon was born in London in 1788, of Scottish, French and English extraction. He succeeded to a baronetcy in 1798, and as Lord Byron he was soon to become the most famous poet of his age - with the publication of Childe Harold, in 1812 - as well as one of its most notorious characters, His career spanned a momentous period in European history, in which Byron himself was deeply involved. He left England in 1816, and died in Missolonghi in Greece (where he had gone to join the forces struggling for Greek independence) in 1824.