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1809 satirical poem penned by Lord Byron
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
is an 1809 satirical poem written by
Lord Byron
, and published by James Cawthorn in
London
.
Background and description
[
edit
]
The poem was first published anonymously, in March 1809, and a second, expanded edition followed in 1809, with Byron identified as the author. The opening parodies the
first satire
of
Juvenal
.
[
citation needed
]
Byron had published his first book of poetry,
Hours of Idleness
, in 1807. It received "strong censure" in a review by
Henry Brougham
, published anonymously in the
Edinburgh Review
.
[1]
Byron was already working on a poem called "British Bards", but the review, which he (incorrectly) attributed to
Francis Jeffrey
, prompted him to expand its scope; he made Jeffrey "the central figure in a wide-ranging satire on contemporary practices both in writing and in reviewing". In writing it, he drew on earlier satires, including the
Baviad
(1791) and
Maeviad
(1795) by
William Gifford
(1791), the texts published in the
Anti-Jacobin
(1797?1798), the
Epics of the Ton
(1807) by
Lady Anne Hamilton
and the
Simpliciad
(1808) by
Richard Mant
.
[2]
Byron used heroic couplets in imitation of
Alexander Pope
's
The Dunciad
to attack the reigning poets of Romanticism, including
William Wordsworth
and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, and Francis Jeffrey, the editor of the
Edinburgh Review
. He praised instead such Neoclassical poets as Pope and
John Dryden
. The poem went through several editions, but Byron finally suppressed the 5th edition in 1812 because he had come to regret his attitude toward those he had attacked.
[
citation needed
]
Sources
[
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]
References
[
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]
External links
[
edit
]
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