We hope you will enjoy these fine, old-fashioned stories that Lord Byron wrote in an old-fashioned way. He tells these tales in rhyming verse and heroic couplets, and he makes them dashing, romantic, and even melodramatic in a way that has become foreign to us with the passing of time.
These are tales of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish nation that, in Lord Byron's day, encompassed what we now know as the Middle East, from Iran to Morocco; the modern nation of Turkey; and the Balkans as well: modern Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and the other Balkan nations. Byron travelled extensively in the Empire and learned about its history and customs. He then passed what he learned through his own romantic temperament and imagination, and through his fascination with men with darkly troubled souls and the women they love and who love them. In these five stories we find love and honor lost and won, hearts and cities conquered and broken, and a constant struggle to find something higher, deeper and finer in life than what comes to the common lot of humanity. The stories include The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, and The Siege of Corinth.
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