Byron: A Literary Life

by Caroline Franklin

This is the first biography of Byron to focus on the poet as a professional writer and the circumstances of literary production of his major poems. It shows how Byron interacted and collaborated with other writers; how he tailored his writing to different circles of readers when experimenting with genre, style, and serial publication; how he negotiated with his publishers in establishing the bounds of his challenge to political, sexual and religious conventions. His aristocratic status enabled him to combine the face-saving appearance of insouciant dilettantism with an actual writing practice as dedicatedly professional in many ways as that of novelists like Scott or Dickens.

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 8, 2000