The works of Lord Byron and his friend Sir Walter Scott had an influence on European literature which was immediate and profound. Peter Cochran’s book charts that influence on France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Russia, with individual chapters on Goethe, Pushkin, and Baudelaire – and one special chapter on Ibsen, who called Peer Gynt his Manfred. Cochran shows that, although Byron’s best work is his satirical writing, which is aimed in part at his earlier “romantic” material and its readership, his self-correction was not taken on board by many European writers (Pushkin being the exception), and it was the gloomy Byronic Heroes who held sway. These were often read as revolutionaries, but were in fact dead-end. It was a mythical, not a literary Byron whom people thought they had read. The book ends with chapters on three British writers who seem at last to have read Byron, in their different ways, accurately – Eliot, Joyce, and Yeats.

The works of Lord Byron and his friend Sir Walter Scott had an influence on European literature which was immediate and profound. Peter Cochran's book charts that influence on France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Russia, with individual chapters on Goethe, Pushkin, and Baudelaire -- and one special chapter on Ibsen, who called Peer Gynt his Manfred. Cochran shows that, although Byron's best work is his satirical writing, which is aimed in part at his earlier "romantic" material and its readership, his self-correction was not taken on board by many European writers (Pushkin being the exception), and it was the gloomy Byronic Heroes who held sway. These were often read as revolutionaries, but were in fact dead-end. It was a mythical, not a literary Byron whom people thought they had read. The book ends with chapters on three British writers who seem at last to have read Byron, in their different ways, accurately -- Eliot, Joyce, and Yeats.

In Bryon's Shadow draws on a wide range of sources to create a model for literary history that synthesizes literary investigation and cultural studies to develop a fuller understanding of the historical forces influencing the Anglo-American conception of modern Greece."--Jacket.

Richard Cardwell was given the Elma Dangerfield Award of the International Byron Society for the best book on Byron in 2005-06 Byron, arguably, was and remains the most famous and infamous English poet in the modern period in Continental Europe. From Portugal in the West to Russia in the East, from Scandinavia in the North to Spain in the South he inspired and provoked, was adored and reviled, inspired notions of freedom in subject lands and, with it, the growth of national idealisms which, soon, would re-draw the map of Europe. At the same time the Byronic persona, incarnate in "Childe Harold", "Manfred", "Lara" and others, was received with enthusiasm and fear as experience demonstrated that Byron's Romantic outlook was two-edged, thrilling and appalling in the same moment. All the great writers-Goethe, Mickiewicz, Lermontov, Almeida Garret, Espronceda, Lamartine, among many others-strove to outdo, imitate, revise, and integrate the sublime Lord into their own cultures, to create new national voices, and to dissent from the old order. The volume explores Byron's European reception in its many guises, bringing new evidence, challenging old assumptions, and offering fresh perspectives on the protean impact of Lord Byron on the Continent. This book consistes of two volumes. Series Editor: Dr Elinor Shaffer FBA, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London Contributors Richard A. Cardwell, University of Nottingham, UK Joanne Wilkes, University of Auckland, NZ Peter Cochran, Cambridge, UK Ernest Giddey, University of Lausanne, Switzerland Edoardo Zuccato, IULM University, Milan Giovanni Iamartino, University of Milan, Italy Derek Flitter, University of Birmingham, UK Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa, University of Lisbon, Portugal Mihaela Anghelescu Irimia, University of Bucharest, Romania Frank Erik Pointner, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany Achim Geisenhanslüke, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany Theo D'haen, Leiden University, The Netherlands Martin Procházka, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Miroslawa Modrzewska, University of Gdansk, Poland Orsolya Rakai, Budapest, Hungary Nina Diakonova, St. Petersburg, Russia Vitana Kostadinova, Plovdiv University, Bulgaria Jørgen E. Nielsen, Copenhagen, Denmark Bjorn Tysdahl, University of Oslo, Norway Ingrid Elam, Sweden Anahit Bekaryan, Institute of Fine Arts of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia Innes Merabishvili, State University of Tbilisi, Georgia Litsa Trayiannoudi, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Massimiliano Demata, Mansfield College, Oxford, UK

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron offers the latest in critical thinking about the poet that defined the Romantic era across Europe and beyond. The volume presents forty-four groundbreaking essays that enable readers to assess Lord Byron's central position in Romantic traditions and his profound and far-reaching influence on British, European, and world culture. The chapters are organized into five sections-'Works', 'Biographical Contexts', 'Literary and Cultural Contexts', 'Afterlives', and 'Reading Byron Now'-that guide readers through the most important issues and frameworks for interpreting Byron. 'Works' presents original readings of Byron's key works and many of his lesser-known ones, giving space to extensive studies of his great epic, Don Juan, and the poem that brought him fame, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 'Biographical Contexts' invites readers to consider Byron's life through key themes and patterns. 'Literary and Cultural Contexts' sets out the most important intellectual traditions from which Byron's work emerged and in which it developed. 'Afterlives' shows readers the extent of Byron's influence on literature, art, music, and politics in Europe and beyond. 'Reading Byron Now' advances the critical agendas that are shaping Byron Studies today. The Handbook tackles key themes associated with Byron including the Byronic Hero, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, sexuality, mobility, scepticism, the Gothic, celebrity culture, and much more. For new readers of Byron, the volume provides an excellent grounding in his life and work, and for specialists, it opens up exciting new approaches to an icon of Romantic literature.

Fiona MacCarthy makes a breakthrough in interpreting Byron's life and poetry drawing on John Murray's world-famous archive. She brings a fresh eye to his early years: his childhood in Scotland, embattled relations with his mother, the effect of his deformed foot on his development. She traces his early travels in the Mediterranean and the East, throwing light on his relationships with adolescent boys - a hidden subject in earlier biographies. While paying due attention to the compelling tragicomedy of Byron's marriage, his incestuous love for his half-sister Augusta and the clamorous attention of his female fans, she gives a new importance to his close male friendships, in particular that with his publisher John Murray. She tells the full story of their famous disagreement, ending as a rift between them as Byron's poetry became more recklessly controversial. Byron was a celebrity in his own lifetime, becoming a 'superstar' in 1812, after the publication of Childe Harold. The Byron legend grew to unprecedented proportions after his death in the Greek War of Independence at the age of thirty-six. The problem for a biographer is sifting the truth from the sentimental, the self-serving and the spurious. Fiona MacCarthy has overcome this to produce an immaculately researched biography, which is also her refreshing personal view.