A leading figure in Romanticism and a political campaigner committed to social reform, Lord Byron (1788–1824) is regarded as one of the greatest of British poets. First published in 1922, this two-volume work is a compilation of letters Byron wrote between 1808 and 1824 to some of his close friends, including Lady Melbourne, John Cam Hobhouse, a fellow-student at Cambridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The introduction and biographical notes by the publisher John Murray IV (1851–1928), grandson of Byron's own publisher John Murray II, supplement the letters and restore their narrative thread. Volume 1 covers the period 1808–15, from the trip Byron took across Europe with Hobhouse as a young man to his marriage to Anne Isabella Milbanke. A large portion of the volume is devoted to Byron's letters to Lady Melbourne, in which he reveals the many details of his tormented love life.
