George Gordon, Lord Byron--by his own reckoning renowned as a poet from that day in March 1812 when he awoke to find himself famous as the author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I and II--likewise merits recognition as a master of prose expression. On occasion he claimed to prefer prose to poetry. In 1813 he wished he could have made a name for himself not as a writer of poetry but as a writer of prose, but the public insisted that he continue writing poems. Even in 1824, in a 23 February letter to his half sister, Augusta Leigh, he noted that his daughter Ada's "preference of prose (strange as it may now seem) was and indeed is mine--(for I hate reading verse--and always did)." Although much of Byron's poetry is autobiographical, of necessity he obscured the more personal details. "In rhyme," he wrote on 17 November 1813, "I can keep more away...