GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824) was born in London; at the age of ten, upon his father's death, he became the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale. Forced to leave England in the wake of scandal, he spent years living in Italy and elsewhere in Europe; he died at Missolonghi in Greece after contracting a fever while fighting with the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire.
FIONA STAFFORD is a professor of English literature at Oxford University. The author of many books, including a biography of Jane Austen, she also wrote and presented the highly acclaimed "The Meaning of Trees" for BBC Radio 3's The Essay. Her book The Long, Long Life of Trees, published in 2017, was a Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year. - (Random House, Inc.)