Byron's Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Letters and Journals, Criticism, Images of Byron

It includes eighteen of his lyrics; Cantos One,Three, and excerpts from Canto Four of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; twoverse romances, The Prisoner of Chillon and The Giaour, the latternewly receiving critical attention for its prophetically disjunctivestructure; Manfred; The Vision of Judgment; and Don Juan, presented inlong self-contained extracts—the First, Fifth, Ninth, and SixteenthCantos complete, with the close of the Second Canto. An unusually richselection from Byron’s letters and journals accompanies the poems.

The critical essays offer an integrated view of Byron’s achievement aswell as analyses of its different facets. Published for the first timeis Bergen Evans’s general essay "Lord Byron’s Pilgrimage"; other essaysare by John D. Jump, Michael G. Cooke, Francis Berry, Robert F.Gleckner, James R. Thompson, Frank D. McConnell, Leslie A. Marchand,and E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

A special section, "Images of Byron," presents 26 views of Byron asartist and as the epitome of the Romantic hero, ranging from theperspectives of his contemporaries to those of such modern writers asJames Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Albert Camus.

A Chronology sets forth the main events of Byron’s life, and a SelectedBibliography lists sources for further study.