Byron

After Shakespeare the most famous British author in Europe, in Britain Byron was for years either neglected, or a victim of the myth of his own personality. Now he is read and studied both for his complex politics and as a forerunner of many of the ideas and techniques more usually associated with post-modernism. Bone tackles the critical problems both of the populism of much of Byron's early work, and conversely of the sophisticated comedy of Beppo, Don Juan and The Vision of Judgment. He argues that for all its contradictoriness Byron's poetic mind develops organically, and that the scintillating technique of the late works grows out of the profoundly modern world-view, relativistic and secular, which had developed through his early years. Byron’s writings are seen as a vital area for post-ideological and new-formalist criticism.
About the Author

Drummond Bone is Principal of Royal Holloway University of London. Previously Professor of English Literature at The University of Glasgow, he is co-editor of the journal Romanticism, and an advisory editor, and former academic editor, of the Byron Journal. He has published widely on Byron, Shelley, and Romantic critical theory.