Edleston: Lord Byron's Boy Poems

by Lord Byron, Keith Hale (editor)

A collection of romantic poems Byron wrote for John Edleston, Lord Clare, Earl Delawarr, Lucas Chalandrutsanos, and other boys. The collection spans Byron's life. Some poems for Edleston, Clare, and Delawarr were among the earliest verse he wrote; the poems to Chalandrutsanos were his very last. Selected and introduced by Keith Hale.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

132 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 2013

About the author

George Gordon Byron (invariably known as Lord Byron), later Noel, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale FRS was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond.

Byron's notabilty rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured upper-class living, numerous love affairs, debts, and separation. He was notably described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization, the Carbonari, in its struggle against Austria. He later travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever contracted while in Messolonghi in Greece.

Reviews

[Shane Pennell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know I was a fan of Lord Byron until I came across this book. Turns out there's a lot more to him than I thought, and his love poetry for boys is as beautiful as that of Shakespeare, Housman, or Whitman. This volume, the books of love poetry for young men by Shakespeare and Housman that are also edited by Keith Hale, Wilfred Owen's Collected Poems, and Whitman's "Masculine Beauty," edited by Michael Wilson, are the core of my gay poetry collection. Beautiful stuff.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a lot of editions of Byron's poetry available, but this is the first to cull all the poems he wrote to his male loves over the years, from John Edleston to the Greek boy Lucas, and put them all together in one volume. I was shocked by how many there are. Hale's introduction makes them all make sense and gives interesting information on Byron's romantic relationships with males. The poetry is excellent.