Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend

Byron was—to echo Wordsworth—half-perceived and half-created. He would have affirmed Jean Baudrillard's observation that "to seduce is to die to reality and reconstitute oneself as illusion." But among the readers he seduced, in person and in poetry, were women possessed of vivid imaginations who collaborated with him in fashioning his legend. Accused of "treating women harshly," Byron acknowledged: "It may be so—but I have been their martyr. My whole life has been sacrificed to them and by...