More than any other poet Lord Byron has been identified with his own heroes with Childe Harold, the romantic traveller with Manfred, the outcast from society with Don Juan, the cynical, heartless lover. Although Byron did use his own life as the material for much of his poetry, it is by no means purely autobiographical. It is, however, in his long poems that Byron's genius most truly resides rather than in the lyrics which usually represent him in selections. Byron was born into an aristocratic family of doubtful reputation. His father died of drink and debauchery when Byron was 3, and when he was 10 his great uncle-Lord Byron-also died. Byron inherited the title, a vast house called New stead Abbey, and estates already mortgaged or in decay. Byron's father, by his first marriage, had a daughter, Augusta, Byron's half-sister. His father's second wife, Byron's own mother, was a proud Calvinistic Scotswoman named Catherine Gordon of Gight. He was born with a malformed foot-a disability which tortured him with self-consciousness in his youth. He went to Harrow and to Trinity College, Cambridge, where, amongst other eccentricities, he kept a bear. While an undergraduate he published his first book of poems, Hours of Idleness. The adverse criticism it deservedly got stung Byron not to despair but to revenge, and he replied with a satire in the manner of Pope called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. After Cambridge, Byron went on the grand tour of Europe, traditional for men of his education but owing to the Napoleonic Wars, his route took him, not overland, as was usual by way of Paris to Rome, but by sea to Lisbon, Spain, and the Mediterranean. For nearly 2 years he wandered about Greece and the Aegean Islands. This was the shaping time of his imagination. When he was 23, his mother died, and he came home, an extremely handsome young man, to install himself boisterously at New stead Abbey. He entered London society and spoke in the House of Lords.. It was now that he showed his friend, R. C. Dallas, a new satire, Hints from Horace. Dallas, secretly not much impressed, asked if he had anything else Byron quite casually said that he had a lot of Spenserian stanzas. Dallas read them with astonishment and delight, showed them to Murray the publisher, and on 20 February 1812, the first two cantos of Childe Harold were: published. They took the town by storm. Byron became famous overnight. He could not now write fast enough, and in the next 4 years appeared a series of romantic poems, the best among them being The Corsair and The Bride of Abydos. It is said that 14,000 copies of The Corsiar were sold in a day. Byron had always been susceptible to women and attractive to them now that he was successful, they threw themselves at his head. For 3 years he lived in the limelight, and then, quite unaccountably, married Ann Milbanke, a frigid, correct, intellectual woman, entirely unsuited to him but with a lot of money. She bore him a daughter and left him within a year, hinting that he had an immoral relationship with his half-sister Augusta. Society turned against him, as lavish now with calumny and spite as it had been with praise and flattery. Byron would not stay to be insulted he left England for good. The next few years were spent mostly in Venice, where Byron established himself with a menagerie of strange animals and conducted various love affairs. It was in Italy that his masterpiece Don Juan was written. This brilliant, caustic, rambling satire is written in a colloquial style. which is the result of a mastery of technique. Byron, always a fluent writer, was not over-critical of his own work but Beppo, A Vision of Judgment, and Don Juan more than justify his reputation as a great poet. His influence on European literature--both by what he wrote and by the general idea of the romantic figure of Childe Harold--the typical Byronic hero-was very great. Like