Book excerpt: For the first time all Byron's miscellaneous prose writings are collected together, including his speeches in the House of Lords, short stories, reviews, critical articles, and Armenian translations, as well as such shorter pieces as memoranda, notes, reminiscences, and marginalia. Althoughsome of this material has been published before - most notably in the appendices to Prothero's edition of the Letters and Journals (1898-1901) - a considerable proportion is here published for the first time. For the first time too, the prose works are presented with full scholarly apparatus. The texts are reproduced from their original manuscripts wherever these are still extant; and the notes provide an introduction to each item, detailing the circumstances of its composition, its publicationhistory, and its historical and literary background, as well as providing comprehensive annotation of individual points of obscurity, allusions, and other matters of content.