Debate as to the nature and influence of his poetry continues, and in making their selection for this volume the editors have chosen poems that defined Byron for the nineteenth century and poems less well known then but of particular interest to today’s readers.

This Penguin Classic, based on the landmark Murray edition of 1832–4, is the only widely available selection to include Byron’s own notes on the same page as the poetic texts, and to present the poems in the sequence of composition and/or first publication, thus providing a sense of Byron’s developing career. It contains the complete texts of many longer works not readily available in their entirety, including Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, all but one of the ‘Eastern tales', and the historical drama Sardanapalus, now regarded as a key text in the modern re-evaluation of Romanticism. The editors provide full notes, bibliography, a biographical sketch and detailed chronology of Byron’s life and work.