RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And nearly two centuries after he died, Lord Byron's posthumous career is still lucrative. The brilliant British poet Lord Byron had affairs with women, men and the occasional relative. One mistress famously called him mad, bad and dangerous to know.

He cultivated his scandalous image, but the poet also had a lifelong correspondence with a very different friend from college: a clergyman named Francis Hodgson. Tomorrow, Byron's letters come up for auction. We asked Gabriel Heaton of Sotheby's to describe them.

Dr. GABRIEL HEATON (Sotheby's): As objects, they are just beautiful. The way that you can get a sense of Byron's thought processes from his letters is just spine-tingling, and there are very few letter-writers who can match Byron. You know, I'm sure anyone who would've received a letter in that distinctive handwriting would've said, well, whatever else happens today, I can be pretty sure it's going to be something interesting in this letter.

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Dr. HEATON: Because there's always something going on in Byron's life, and he always expresses it so wonderfully.

MONTAGNE: Give us an example of, say, some of the early letters - and this would be of a time just before Byron was the famous - the superstar that he became in his time.

Dr. HEATON: Well, I mean, you have to imagine the series of letters here. So we have him writing from Lisbon, saying, oh, how much he's enjoying Portugal, that the only vices of the people are lice and sodomy. And then back to England, and he's writing about how useful the girls are on the estate. And then you have other letters where Hodgson has written to him and said, well, I really think you ought to read this kind of work of Christian apologia...

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Dr. HEATON: ...and that other work. And Byron responds saying, well, yeah, thanks very much for the list, explaining exactly why he isn't a Christian. And, I mean, there's no doubt that Byron rather enjoyed teasing, maybe, this, sort of, rather worthy Christian friend of his. But at the same time, there is no doubt about the real warmth that Byron feels for this man, and that comes across in all of these letters.

MONTAGNE: There's one, I gather, that describes Byron's quite stormy romance with a maid, with a servant by the name of Susan Vaughn. He pours out his heart a bit - Byron does.

Dr. HEATON: Yes, he does. You get a series of letters charting the collapse of the relationship, yes, which have never been published before, where Byron says, you know, it's my fault. I should've realized that no one could love such a man as I. And it's the fragility of Byron that really comes across there, his real forlornness. They're very, very revealing in that way.

MONTAGNE: Well, you come at the other extreme, though, possibly the level of literary gossip and calumny is one of his writings - he's upset, apparently, because William Wordsworth has criticized the poet Alexander Pope, who Byron...

Dr. HEATON: That's right.

MONTAGNE: …really looks up to. How does he refer to him?

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Dr. HEATON: He describes him as Turdsworth, with a great big emphasis under the word turd...

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Dr. HEATON: ...in the sentence there.

MONTAGNE: Was that just - is it just a one-off, or did he weave into this higher level of correspondence, little literary jibes?

Dr. HEATON: There were plenty of rather salacious comments in these letters. This is certainly not the only time where he is rude about Wordsworth, so it was both a literary and a sort of political difference that they had there.

MONTAGNE: Do we learn, from these letters, much about Byron the poet?

Dr. HEATON: Yes. I mean, there's a wonderful letter, actually, the last letter in this sequence where he does touch on literary subjects. And then before he finishes off the letter, he goes for a horse ride. And he comes back and he furiously writes this postscript to the letter, where he's - and used up this little bit of paper that he has and he's writing at every little corner of the paper.

He uses this to criticize Hodgson's concept of tragedy, you know, because Hodgson had sort of been writing that the tragic hero has to be a good man. And here we have Byron writing, you know, it's clearly this idea has come to him, you know, as he went for his evening ride, comes back and writes no, no, no. That's ridiculous. You know, think of "Paradise Lost." Who is the hero of "Paradise Lost"? Satan. And then he carries on and lists all these tragedies where the hero is clearly not a great man. But, of course, this moment of saying Satan is the hero of "Paradise Lost," which is a great Romantic point, is pretty revealing.

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MONTAGNE: That was Gabriel Heaton of Sotheby's. This is only the second time this group of letters from Lord Byron has been sold. The first time, back in 1885, it was also Sotheby's that auctioned off the letters, which sold for about 150 pounds. This time, they're expected to fetch about 1,000 times that sum.

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