SOURCE: "Epilogue: The Truth Appears," in Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-century England, University of California Press, 1985, pp. 343-61.

The following excerpt from Crompton's biography of Romantic poet Lord Byron looks at the explicitly homosexual poem Don Leon. The poem, which appeared in print soon after the poet's death, presents itself as a portion of Byron's memoirs. Crompton argues against Byron's authorship, but also takes the poem as a serious object of study, considering it an important document in gay history.

The authorship of Don Leon remains a riddle, but it is possible to understand why the poem was resolutely ignored by nineteenth-century writers on Byron. Part of the difficulty lay in the form in which the poet chose to convey his revelations. The obviously fabricated side of the publication suggested that it belonged to the extensive category of pseudo-Byroniana that appeared after Byron's death with no...