British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789-1832

This book surveys and interprets the hundreds of satirical poems and prose narratives published in Britain during the Romantic period. Although satire was a major genre with a wide readership, such works have been largely neglected by literary scholars, satisfied that satire disappeared in the late eighteenth century. Paying as much attention to now-forgotten figures like John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’) and Jane Taylor as to Byron, Gary Dyer argues that contemporary political and social conflicts gave new meanings to conventions of satire inherited from classical Rome and eighteenth-century England. Situating these satires in their cultural and material context sheds light on issues such as the tactics satirists used to deflect prosecution for sedition, and the ramification for women writers of satire’s ‘masculine’ connotations. The book includes a bibliography of more than 700 volumes containing satirical verses.