*g* And here I thought Byron/Augusta was old news to everyone. Biography wise, there was a recent one about two years ago but that was a bit too flashy and without real period sense for my taste. The classic one is by Leslie Marchand, but that one is unbelievably patronising towards Augusta.

My own two favourites among older biographies (i.e. both are from the 60s) are both by Malcolm Elwin:

"Lord Byron's Wife" and "Lord Byron's Family: Annnabella, Augusta and Ada".

Because Elwin often quotes whole letters from all parties concerned, had full access to all the Milbanke papers, really is great with conveying period and atmosphere and though focusing on Annabella and Augusta - whom he both portrays in a three dimensional way - also renders a great portrait of Byron.

Among recent publications, my favourite is "The Kindness of Sisters" by David Crane, which is only three years or so old and also terrific about the whole Augusta-Annabella-Byron triangle, even managing to bring bit players to life like the Reverend whom Annabella had with her when she wanted a confession from the dying Augusta during their last meeting.

If you're interested in Byron himself as a poet, though, I'd read Don Juan. Which is Byron at his best (and so not his, well, Byronic image), witty, brilliant, and never boring, and managing to turn clichés upside down everywhere. (For example, Don Juan isn't a big seducer but everyone's boytoy, and when he ends up in a harem in disguise, that archetypical macho fantasy, he does so because the Sultan fancied the boy, believing him a girl, AND the other girls are into him as a girl, too. Trust Byron to foil group sex fantasies by making the man into an object of lesbian desire.*g*

Plus, how can you not love an epic that starts with:

I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan --

and then you have spot-on depictions of male teenagers like this one of Juan at 16:


He thought about himself, and the whole earth
Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,
And how the deuce they ever could have birth;
And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars,
How many miles the moon might have in girth,
Of air-balloons, and of the many bars
To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies; --
And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes.