In Byron and Newstead Professor Beckett examines Lord Byron as a landed aristocrat and in this context brings a new approach to the unravelling of his financial and business affairs. Byron's tenure of landed estates are reappraised and an entirely new explanation is offered of the events surrounding the sale of Newstead Abbey, his ancestral home.
The author reassesses the intricacies of his financial plight during his minority and marriage and shows how eventually he was considered a wealthy man by Shelley and others in the English expatriate community in Italy.
Even for Byron enthusiasts the price of the book is somewhat prohibitive; a request for it in your local library could eventually give you and others fresh insight into the influence of Byron's widely supposed financial difficulties on his poetry and lifestyle.
Ken Brand
