Byron: A Literary Life

This biography of Byron focuses 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; and 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.