Known mainly for The Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli as Told in Their Unpublished Letters and Other Family Papers (1949), Iris Origo was a biographer who was interested in the subjects of her writing as individuals, fascinated by the small details that make up a person's life. The Last Attachment casts new light on the life of George Gordon, Lord Byron, because of the vast amount of new material that Origo uncovered and incorporated. Because she was English but had spent the larger part of her life in Italy, she brought a cultural familiarity to Byron's years in that country. Her biographical subjects spanned from the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi; to Byron's illegitimate daughter, Allegra Byron; to Francesco di Marco Dantini, a fourteenth-century merchant. Origo believed that "it is not necessary that the subject of such Lives be giants themselves."

Born Iris Margaret Cutting on...