Lord Byron’s Correspondence: Chiefly with Lady Melbourne, Mr. Hobhouse, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, and P. B. Shelley

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.