Public domain photo of Lord Byron

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

A selective list of online literary criticism for the nineteenth-century English Romantic poet Lord Byron, with links to reliable biographical and introductory material and signed, peer-reviewed, and scholarly literary criticism


Main Page | 19th-Century Writers | British Poets, Romantic | About LiteraryHistory.com


Introduction & Biography

"Lord Byron (George Gordon)." Poetry Foundation. An extended introduction to Byron, and excerpts from his poems. Biography, publication of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Giaour, The Corsair, Parisina, Hebrew Melodies, Manfred, Beppo, relationship with the Shelleys, the Byronic Hero. Includes text for some of his most famous poems.

"George Gordon Byron." A brief biography and introduction to Byron, and text for some of his best known poems. Academy of American Poets.

"An Introduction to the Poetry of Lord Byron," by Germaine Greer. The Observer 23 January 2010.

"Lord Byron." A brief biography to Byron from the educational publisher Gale/Cengage Learning.

"Byron's Poems About Scotland." Prof. Peter Cochran discusses Byron as an Anglo-Scots poet, providing numerous examples of his Scottish-themed and Scottish-influenced poetry.

A biography of Byron from the International Byron Society. Covers his Early Childhood and School Days, University, Grand Tour, Years of Fame, Marriage and Separation, Exile, and Last Will and Testament.

"Lord Byron in Arcadia," a short biography of Byron by Jay poet Rogoff.

"Byron's Gothic Readings," by Prof. Douglass H. Thomson, academic web site.

"The Messolonghi Byron Society." Web site devoted to Byron's involvement in the nineteenth-century Greek struggle for independence.

Kelsall, Malcolm. "George Gordon, Lord Byron." An introduction to Byron, from a database that provides newly written, signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription. Literary Encyclopedia, 8 Jan. 2001. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd [subscription service].


Literary Criticism

Elfenbein, Andrew. "Paranoid Poetics: Byron, Schreber, Freud." Considers Sigmund Freud's only discussion of a work of Byron, his drama Manfred. Romanticism on the Net 23 (Aug. 2001).

Garofalo, Daniela. "Political seductions: the show of war in Byron's Sardanapalus." Byron's dramatic tragedy Sardanapalus and the Napoleonic wars. Criticism Winter 2002. [Subscription service, which provides links to additional scholarly articles on Sardanapalus through this page.]

George, Laura. "Reification and the Dandy: Beppo, Byron, and other Queer Things." Special issue on Queer Romanticism, Romanticism on the Net 36-37 (2004-2005).

Goldberg, Brian. "Byron, Blake, and Heaven" [and William Blake]. Prof. Goldberg discusses similarities in both poets' ideas about heaven. Romanticism on the Net 27 (August 2002).

Goldweber, David E. "Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII." Renascence Spring 1997 [first half only].

Jones, Christine. "'When this world shall be former': Catastrophism as imaginative theory for the younger Romantics." Romanticism on the Net 24 (Nov. 2001).

LaChance, Charles. "Don Juan, 'a problem, like all things.'" Papers on Language and Literature Summer 1998 [first half only].

Richardson, Alan. A preview of Chapter 8, "Byron and the Theatre," in The Cambridge Companion to Byron (2004) [preview].

Rosa, George M. "Byron, Mme de Stael, Schlegel, and the religious motif in Armance." Comparative Literature 46, 4 (Fall 1994) [first half only, jstor].

Sandy, Mark. "'The Colossal Fabric's Form': Remodelling Memory, History, and Forgetting in Byron's Poetic Recollections of Ruins." An interpretation of Byron's Manfred and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage through Friedrich Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations. Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 51 (2008).

Stauffer, Andrew M. "Romantic Anger and Byron's Curse." Anger as a poetic stance in Byron's work. Romantic Circles.

Stein, Atara. "Immortals and Vampires and Ghosts, Oh My!: Byronic Heroes in Popular Culture." On the continuing influence of the Byronic hero. Romantic Circles, 2002.

Walker, David. "'People's Ancestors are History's Game': Byron's Don Juan and Russian History." Studies in the Literary Imagination (2003) [subscription service].

Whissel, Cynthia. "'Tis more than what is called mobility': Structure and a Development towards Understanding in Byron's Don Juan." Romanticism on the Net 13 (Feb. 1999).


Web Sites

Performing Byron's Don Juan, a project involving high school students, organized by Professor Jonathan Gross.

Romanticism on the Net. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. An international, peer-reviewed electronic journal devoted to British Romantic studies, an impressive scholarly enterprise that has been making essays freely available since 1996.

Romantic Circles. Eds. Neil Fraistat, Steven E. Jones, and Carl Stahmer. "A refereed scholarly website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture." An innovative publication on topics in Romanticism.

"A Romantic Natural History." Ed. Ashton Nichols. The relationships between literary works and natural history in the century before Darwin, with articles on Byron and other Romantics.

The Atlantic Monthly from 1857 to 1901 can be browsed (there is no search function) at a site provided by Cornell U. A patient researcher will find early reviews of Byron and other 19th-century authors in the archives.


Book Reviews

Elfenbein, Andrew. A review of two Byron publications: Andrew Elfenbein's Byron and the Victorians (1995); and Donald A. Low (ed.), Byron: Selected Poetry and Prose (1995). Review by Matthew Scott in Romanticism on the Net 3 (Aug. 1996).

Goode, Clement Tyron (ed.) A review of George Gordon, Lord Byron: A Comprehensive, Annotated Research Bibliography of Secondary Materials in English 1973-1994. Reviewed in Romanticism on the Net by Andrew Nicholson.

Gross, Jonathan David. Byron: The Erotic Liberal. Reviewed by G. Todd Davis in Romanticism on the Net 25 (Feb. 2002).

McGann, Jerome. Byron and Romanticism (Cambridge UP 2002). Reviewed at Romantic Circles.

Stabler, Jane. A review of Byron, Poetics and History (Cambridge UP 2002). Reviewed by Jonathan Sachs, Romanticism on the Net 38-39 (May-Aug. 2005).

Vail, Jeffrey W. The Literary Relationship of Lord Byron and Thomas Moore (John Hopkins UP 2001). Reviewed by William Brewer in Romanticism on the Net 26 (May 2002).


Main Page | 19th-Century Literature | British Poets, Romantic | About LiteraryHistory.com


1998-2012 by LiteraryHistory.com