ABSTRACT
Byrons new-found fascination with the power of money during the autumn of 1822 is not only a well-known episode of his biography. It also marks a conspicuous innovation in the poetry that he was writing during the first months after his move from Pisa to Genoa that October. Byrons economic reflections surely were ahead of their time for most readers of poetry at the time and indeed they may still be, to judge from the paucity of commentary on this aspect of the poems. On 5 April 1823, Byrons was visited in Genoa by Edward Blaquiere and Andreas Louriotis. Blaquiere was a former Royal Navy Lieutenant and now self-appointed publicist for liberal causes; he was travelling to Greece under the auspices of the newly formed London Greek Committee. Romantic aesthetics and revolutionary politics finally converge in Byrons last journey, which among other things is a journey out of poetry altogether, and into political action.
