Byron in Context ed. by Clara Tuite (review)

Every year new books about Lord Byron are published increasing the already vast bibliography in the field of Byronic studies. The volume entitled Byron in Context, edited by Clara Tuite and published by Cambridge University Press, can be justifiably considered as one of the most updated and comprehensive works about Byron. Built effectively on existing bibliography, the volume incorporates, amongst others, discussions of Byron’s political ideology and career, his reception in subsequent decades as well as questions on the politics of publishing, religion, war and of course, literary cultures.

The editor has done exceptionally well in selecting the contributing authors, many of whom are renowned Byronists and all experts in their respective field. The chapters are organised in a logical and illuminating fashion and the essays speak to one another without repetition of content. Overall, the editorial approach is balanced among academic fields such as history, literature and philosophy. The editor should also be commended for putting together a gender-balanced list of contributors.

The volume contains thirty-seven chapters, an introduction, a detailed chronology and an extensive bibliography for further reading and research. The essays are neatly put together and organised in four parts: first Byron’s life and works, then his political, social and intellectual transformations, followed by the relevant literary cultures and, finally, his reception and ‘afterlives’. There is an impressive range of topics discussed, and through this book the reader will most certainly be in a position to delve into all aspects of Byron studies across the board. The very nature of the volume serves as both an introduction to all the important questions regarding Byron but also as a source for the expert scholar looking for specific new information.

I have chosen three representative chapters which relate to the broader topic of Byron’s politics, a theme that runs through the entire volume in different ways.

Professor John Beckett’s essay returns to the controversial question of Byron’s political ideology and ‘senatorial’ career. The literary clash between Malcolm Kelsall and Michael Foot in the late 1980s provided us with two very different portraits of Byron: one of a rather moderate Whig and another of an early radical. Then followed Peter Cochran’s Byron’s Romantic Politics in which the author put in doubt the very existence of a genuine Byronic ideology. In the main body of his essay, Beckett recaps existing information about Byron’s speeches in the House of Lords and his political career in London. He then concludes that ‘in truth, the political career that Byron appeared to be planning for himself at Christmas 1811 did not materialize’ (p. 68). In addition, Beckett rightly places Byron in the moderate Whig camp, as he maintains that the poet adhered to the Glorious Revolution’s ideals (pp. 68–69). Finally, concerning the Greek War of Independence, Beckett argues that Byron’s Philhellenism ‘was derived from a patrician education, which led him to see events in the Peloponnese as if they were a continuation of classical antiquity’ (p. 69). In an effort to illuminate and explain Byron’s motives for his second trip in Greece, he proposes that the poet was compelled to join efforts to liberate Greece because of ‘the usual Whig support for national liberation movements’ (p. 69).

With the bicentenary of the commencement of the Greek War of Independence in 1821 coming up, Spiridoula Demetriou’s chapter on Byron’s Greece touches upon a very interesting topic. Demetriou seeks to debunk all prior theories, which argued that Byron achieved almost nothing in Greece. With a more careful examination of the poet’s correspondence, the author proves ‘Byron’s material contribution to the war effort in Missolonghi’ (p. 77). Thus, Demetriou is able to convincingly reject ‘the contention that his presence had no value and that he died before achieving much at all’ (p. 77). Furthermore, a very innovative aspect of her essay is the analysis of Theodoros Vryzakis’ painting, The Reception of...