This book is his most experimental work, but a work no less tradition-saturated than Eliot's. As poet, private individual, and "good European", Montale's way of dealing with his difficulties was to seize the occasions offered him by writing poetry in which the lover's passions for his beloved country would convey the truth of both his public and his private situations.

    

    The first to have access to the Gamba Papers, Origo mined this family archive to tell the story of Byron’s last love affair, a domestic triangle consisting of the poet, his nineteen year old mistress, Countess Guiccioli, and her husband.