When students of Lord Byron need to check a detail about Byron's vexed and intimate relationship with his half sister, Augusta; his friendship with John Cam Hobhouse; or his death at Missolonghi, they turn to Leslie A. Marchand's three-volume Byron: A Biography (1957). A product of meticulous scholarship and personal dedication, this important work marks only one of Marchand's many achievements during his more than forty-year pursuit of Byron, an elusive figure who described himself as "being everything by turns and nothing long." Marchand has also combined his talents as scholar, literary critic, and textual editor in Byron's Poetry: A Critical Introduction (1965) and in the twelve-volume Byron's Letters and Journals (1973-1982). Most Byron scholars agree that Marchand deserves the praise he received from Jerome McGann, editor of the Oxford edition of Byron's complete poetry, who wrote in 1979: "No one needs to be told that Leslie A. Marchand is the...