Since his rise to fame in the early nineteenth century, Byron and his work have been significant subjects for visual art, from book illustration to oil painting. This essay explores Byronic art across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, taking as a case study the treatment of his late narrative poem, Don Juan. Byron’s wide-ranging appeal was a result of both the popularity of his poetry and the public fascination with his life, but it was also determined by the multiple, fluid qualities of his work which facilitated a huge variety of readings across the centuries. Here, the visual implications of these ways of reading are considered, and the essay argues that pictorial Byronism played an important role in presenting evolving perceptions of the broader Romantic movement. Continue reading →
Conventional studies of the short fictional form, whilst acknowledging the existence of the genre in the early nineteenth century, have nevertheless viewed that period as one of relative infertility. Ian Reid, for example, despite arguing … Continue reading →
Didactic writing seldom sets the modern pulse racing, and it is a brave critic who sets out to concentrate on literature which explicitly aims to improve the morals of its readers. From a historical distance, … Continue reading →
