Byron hated an author who was 'all author' and he himself was anything but that. He has been a public figure whose private life has been the subject of intense interest since the publication of Childe Harold Cantos i and ii made him 'famous overnight'. He continues to be the subject not only of scholarly biographical interest but of popular films and television documentaries. To politicians, his political views remain of intense interest, while his sexual mores not only continue to be analysed but have been appropriated by various interest groups to serve their own ends. He is a cultural villain, an anti-hero, and a hero pure and simple. He has the status of a national hero in Greece because of his participation in the Greek War of Independence, and he is also a cultural hero in places as far apart as Russia and Japan. So we have sought in this Companion to place him first of all in the context of the narratives surrounding his own life, and then in the particular circumstances of that life, picking out three obvious areas of particular interest - his relationship to the world of books, to politics, and to sexuality. Only then have we attempted a closer focus on some of Byron's major works. In an output as large as that of Byron his poetical works alone fill some seven volumes. We do not attempt to be comprehensive in this section, but many texts not picked up here are referred to in the other two sections of the volume. Once some familiarity with the issues of the works, including Byron's very considerable contribution to English prose, has been achieved, we have moved on to broader literary and cultural contexts and focused there on Byron's ambivalent relationship to Shakespeare, his massive impact on European literature, and the strange way in which he can be seen in the light either of his attachment to the socially centred poetry of the eighteenth century, or of his prefiguring of postmodernism.