Byron charts the rise and fall of an irresistible and devastatingly handsome genius who had it all and threw it all away. It begins as Byron's struggle for acceptance as a poet is reversed by the publication of Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage, which turns him into an overnight success and the toast of London society--the 19th century equivalent of a bad-boy rock star. While disdaining social conventions, he needs money, so marries wealthy pious Annabella...

Offers an approach to the lives and works of Keats, Wordsworth, Lamb, and the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon through the exemplary events of a single evening spent in thoughtful discussion and, later, raucous conversation.