Byron's Travels

Byron's Travels

Poems, Letters, and Journals

About the Book

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.
Read more
Close

Everyman's Library Classics Series

Resurrection
Byron's Travels
Novels, Tales, Journeys
The Best of Tagore
Selected Stories of Guy de Maupassant
The Babur Nama
Independent People
Selected Writings of Alexander von Humboldt
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
The Art of War
View more

About the Author

Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron was born on January 22, 1788 and he inherited the barony in 1798. He went to school in Dulwich, and then in 1801 to Harrow. In 1805 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, later gaining a reputation in London for his startling good looks and extravagant behavior. His first collection of poems, Hours of Idleness (1807), was not well received, but with the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) he became famous overnight and increased this fame with a series of wildly popular ‘Eastern Tales’. In 1815 he married the heiress Annabella Milbanke, but they were separated after a year. Byron shocked society by the rumored relationship with his half-sister, Augusta, and in 1816 he left England forever. He eventually settled in Italy, where he lived for some time with Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli. He supported Italian revolutionary movements and in 1823 he left for Greece to fight in its struggle for independence, but he contracted a fever and died at Missolonghi in 1824.

Byron’s contemporary popularity was based first on Childe Harold and the ‘Tales’, and then on Don Juan (1819-24), his most sophisticated and accomplished writing. He was one of the strongest exemplars of the Romantic movement, and the Byronic hero was a prototype widely imitated in European and American literature.

More by Lord Byron
Decorative Carat

About the Author

Fiona Stafford
FIONA STAFFORD is a professor of English literature at Oxford University. The author of many books, including a biograph 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 by Yale University Press in 2017, was a Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year. More by Fiona Stafford
Decorative Carat

By clicking submit, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and understand that Penguin Random House collects certain categories of personal information for the purposes listed in that policy, discloses, sells, or shares certain personal information and retains personal information in accordance with the policy. You can opt-out of the sale or sharing of personal information anytime.

Random House Publishing Group