Join us for an afternoon with Andrew Stauffer, who will share his new book, Byron: A Life in Ten Letters. A conversation with Jerome McGann will follow. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
About the Book: Lord Byron was the most celebrated of all the Romantic poets. Troubled, handsome, sexually fluid, disabled, and transgressive, he wrote his way to international fame—and scandal—before finding a kind of redemption in the Greek Revolution. He also left behind the vast trove of thrilling letters (to friends, relatives, lovers, and more) that form the core of this remarkable biography. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Byron’s death, and adopting a fresh approach, it explores his life and work through some of his best, most resonant correspondence. Each chapter opens with Byron’s own voice—as if we have opened a letter from the poet himself—followed by a vivid account of the emotions and experiences that missive touches. This gripping life traces the meteoric trajectory of a poet whose brilliance shook the world and whose legacy continues to shape art and culture to this day.
About the Author: Andrew Stauffer is Professor of English at the University of Virginia and the president of the Byron Society of America. He is the author of Anger, Revolution, and Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and of Book Traces: Nineteenth-Century Readers and the Future of the Library (2020), which was the first recipient in 2021 of the inaugural Marilyn Gaull Book Award of the Wordsworth-Coleridge Association. He is in addition the coeditor of Lord Byron: Selected Writings (2023).
About the Moderator: Jerome McGann is Emeritus University Professor, University of Virginia. His recent Byron and the Poetics of Adversity was awarded the 2023 Elma Dangerfield Award for the year’s best book on Byron. His work in American Studies includes the recent Culture and Language at Crossed Purposes, The Unsettled Records of American Settlement (Chicago, 2022), and the in-progress edition of Jaime de Angulo’s Old Time Stories.
Byron: A Life in Ten Letters will officially be released on February 22. Event attendees will have a special opportunity to purchase the book as an early release during the event only on February 10. To pre-order the book, please see below for the New Dominion Bookshop book order form or call the shop at 434-295-2552.
"This is the best short introduction to Byron available. Stauffer steers us through a tumultuous life with poise and expert authority. The letters provide vivid snapshots of Byron at key moments across three decades and the biography that emerges is deeply absorbing."
—Jane Stabler
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