Oxford World's Classics has an affordable, scholarly paperback edition of Byron's poetry published under the title Lord Byron: The Major Works (2000).

Byron's friend Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote an essay that captured the artistic theory of that whole age of romantic poets. Entitled "A Defence of Poetry," the essay examines the various functions of reason and imagination in the poet's work. It was originally published in 1821 and is reprinted at http://www.library.utoronto.ca/ utel/rp/criticism/shell_il.html (last accessed August, 2001).

Harvard University Press has collected the poet's most important personal writings in the 1984 collection Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals, edited by Leslie A. Marchand.

One of the most influential recent books about romanticism is by influential critic Northrop Frye, whose short 1968 book A Study of English Romanticism gives an excellent quick background to the cultural movement...