Lord Byron and women's writing

However, insufficient critical attention has been given to his connections with influential female authors whom he held in high regard. While there have been some tangential or cursory explorations of Byron’s engagement with women’s writing, this thesis offers a more sustained attempt to map these textual interactions.

In doing so, I consider the extent to which ideas of literary ‘influence’ are appropriate for these relations. Particular case studies – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Madame de Staël, Joanne Baillie, and Mary Shelley – are framed within wider considerations of Byron’s engagement with women writers. Building upon formative inquiries into the idea of influence (Kristeva and Barthes), and more recent studies (Anderson, Elfenbein, Bellonby, and Wolfson), this thesis ultimately argues that contrary to perceptions of Byron as the perennially facetious chauvinist there exists substantial evidence of deep intellectual engagement with the work of women writers.