
Byron's sinewy, funny, electrifying letters are emergency bulletins from a man operating, more often than not, on the extreme edge of despair and disgrace.

Byron was a superb letter-writer: almost all his letters, whatever the subject or whoever the recipient, are enlivened by his wit, his irony, his honesty, and the sharpness of his observation of people. They provide a vivid self-portrait of the man who, of all his contemporaries,...


