This 2002 collection of essays represents twenty-five years of work by one of the most important critics of Romanticism and Byron studies, Jerome McGann. The collection demonstrates McGann's evolution as a scholar, editor, critic, theorist, and historian. His 'General Analytic and Historical Introduction' to the collection presents a meditation on the history of his own research on Byron, in particular how scholarly editing interacted with the theoretical innovations in literary criticism over the last quarter of the twentieth century. McGann's receptiveness to dialogic forms of criticism is also illustrated in this collection, which contains an interview and concludes with a dialogue between McGann and the editor. Many of these essays have previously been available only in specialist scholarly journals. Now McGann's influential work on Byron can be appreciated more widely by new generations of students and scholars.

"Romanticism - and Byron" is a book in two parts. In the first part, Dr Cochran examines "Romanticism" and shows that it is a word meaning anything, and therefore nothing. It is an academic construct created by academics, and has no basis in the writings of the early nineteenth century. Its continued use, argues Dr Cochran, is a modern marketing phenomenon solely. In the second part, Dr Cochran examines the life and work of Byron in the non-"romantic" context of his contemporaries. He shows how Byron's antithetical nature created problems when he was forced into compromising situations with friends who were close to parts of his mind, yet irreconcilable with one another. This "mobility", argues Cochran, was often an embarrassment for Byron's social life, but of great benefit to his creativity. This part of the book features chapters on Shelley, Scott, Blake, Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and is notable for the amount of original archive documentation with which Cochran illustrates his theme.

Expanded and diversified, this companion makes vivid Byron's ongoing relevance to myriad issues of politics, literature and life today.

Often seen as the exception to generalisations about Romanticism, Byron's poetry - and its intricate relationship with a brilliant, scandalous life - has remained a source of controversy throughout the twentieth century. This book brings together recent work on Byron by leading British and American scholars and critics, guiding undergraduate students and sixth-form pupils through the different ways in which new literary theory has enriched readings of Byron's work, and showing how his poetry offers a rewarding focus for questions about the relationship between historical contexts and literary form in the Romantic period. Diverse and fresh perspectives on canonical texts such as Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Manfred are included together with stimulating analyses of less well-known narrative poems, lyrics and dramas. A clearly structured introduction traces key developments in Byron criticism and locates the essays within wider debates in Romantic studies. Detailed headnotes to each essay and a guide to further reading help to orientate the reader and offer pointers for further discussion. The collection will enable students of English literature, Romantic studies and nineteenth-century cultural studies to assess the contribution that different critical methodologies have made to our understanding of individual poems by Byron, as well as concepts like the Byronic hero and evolving definitions of Romanticism.