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Byron and Scott: The Waverley Novels and Historical Engagement
Author: Roderick S. Speer
Date Of Publication: Jun 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0587-2
Isbn: 1-4438-0587-4
Literary historians have repeatedly observed that while Scott as a poet was the first British literary lion of the nineteenth century, his fame was supplanted by Byron as a poet starting in 1812. But that is as far as they take the relationship seriously, for the two writers are traditionally thought of as very different, even as political and temperamental opposites. But in fact, the two writers met each other in 1815, liked each other, and cherished their friendship the rest of their lives. The story of their relationship in personal terms was not over.

Nor was the literary relationship, this study ventures. Scott embarked on an entirely new career in 1814, inventing the historical novel. Byron was swept away by these “Waverley novels,” and in his years of exile to the Continent from 1816 on, repeatedly beseeched his publisher to send Scott’s latest novels. The position here is that those novels were important to Byron’s development in both literary and existential respects. Byron’s historical dramas, his Don Juan, The Island, and his final fling, into the Greek Revolution, show an evolution of both the Byronic Hero and Byron himself in a context his friend Scott had opened up for him.

Dr. Roderick S. Speer is a researcher and editor who lives in Northern Virginia, outside Washington, D.C. With an undergraduate degree from Yale and graduate degrees in English from the University of Pennsylvania, he has taught at Pennsylvania and the University of Western Ontario. He first published on Byron in 1979, went into a Civil Service career, and returned to the Byron field with two published essays in 2008.

“Longer than anyone else, Roderick Speer has thought about and lived with the interactions both personal and literary of the Byron-Scott relationship. This rich and ever-fascinating subject has demanded a comprehensive study for decades. Here it is at last.”

—John Clubbe

"A much-needed revision of the standard view of the Scott-Byron relationship, in life as well as in art. Speer's insights are new, and should cause us to read both authors afresh."

—Peter Cochran

Price Uk Gbp: 34.99
Price Us Usd: 52.99

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