Front cover image for Selected poems

Selected poems

George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 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 behaviour. 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 rumoured relationship with his half-sister, Augusta, and in 1816 he left England for ever. 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
Print Book, English, 1996
Penguin Books, London, 1996
Collections
xxxiii, 830 pages ; 20 cm.
9780140423815, 9780140424508, 0140423818, 0140424504
35209118
A Fragment ('When, to their airy hall, my fathers' voice')
To Woman
The Cornelian
To Caroline ('You say you love, and yet your eye')
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire
Lines to Mr Hodgson (Written on Board the Lisbon Packet)
Main of Athens, ere we part
Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos
To Thyrza (Without a stone to mark the spot')
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, Cantos 1-11
Preface to the First and Second Cantos
To Ianthe
Canto the First
Canto the Second
Appendix to Canto the Second
A Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill
Lines to a Lady Weeping
The Waltz: An Apostrophic Hymn
Remember Thee! Remember Thee!
The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale
The Bride of Abydos: A Turkish Tale
The Corsair: A Tale
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte
Stanzas for Music
She walks in beauty
Lara: A Tale
The Destruction of Sennacherib
Napoleon's Farewell (From the French)
From the French ('Must thou go, my glorious Chief')
The Siege of Corinth
When we two parted
Fare thee well!
Prometheus
The Prisoner of Chillon: A Fable and Sonnet on Chillon
Darkness
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, Canto III
Epistle to Augusta ('My sister! my sweet sister!' &c.)
Lines (On Hearing that Lady Byron was III)
Manfred: A Dramatic Poem
So, we'll go no more a roving
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, Canto II
Epistle from Mr Murray to Dr Polidori ('Dear Doctor, I have read your play')
Beppo: A Venetian Story
Epistle to Mr Murray ('My dear Mr Murray')
Mazeppa
Stanzas to the Po
The Isles of Greece
Francesca of Rimini. From the Inferno of Dante, Canto the Fifth
Stanzas ('When a man hath no freedom')
Sardan Apalus: A Tragedy
Who kill'd John Keats?
The Blues: A Literary Eclogue
The Vision of Judgment
On This Day I Complete My