The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Byron

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) wrote some of the best-known and most controversial poems of his period, including Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cain, Beppo and Don Juan. He was involved in major scandals and disputes, personal, literary and political, from his acrimonious separation from his wife to his defence of Pope's poetry and his persistent satire of Wordsworth and Southey. These areas are among those covered in this concise but comprehensive dictionary. Entries on the poems cover sources, details of composition and publication, and critical responses from Byron's contemporaries to the present. There is also material on his dramatic poems, their production history, and his considerable achievement as a writer of prose, especially in letters, diaries and such pieces as the unfinished vampire story `Augustus Darvell'. There is detailed coverage of his relationships with, among others, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Moore, Scott, P. B. Shelley, Mary Shelley and Keats. Other entries consider his sexuality, his political context, his interest in boxing and swimming, the `Byronic Hero', Byron in fiction, drama and portraiture, illustrations of his work, and his wide influence on later English and European literature.

Martin Garrett is an independent scholar and writer. His postgraduate research was on Renaissance drama and he specialized at first in this period, editing Critical Heritage volumes on Massinger and Sidney. More recently he has worked mainly on Romantic and Victorian literature. He has also written literary and cultural guides to southern Europe, France and Cambridge. He is the author of volumes on Byron, Mary Shelley and the Brownings in the British Library Writers' Lives series, and has taught a wide range of undergraduate courses for the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London.