"This is the first biography of Byron to focus on the poet as a professional writer and the circumstances of literary production of his major poems. It shows how Byron related his writing to a perceived readership in his experimentation with genre and style; and negotiated with his publishers in establishing the bounds of his challenge to political, sexual, and religious conventions. His aristocratic status enabled him to combine the face-saving appearance of insouciant dilettantism with a writing practice as dedicatedly professional as that of novelists like Scott and Dickens."--BOOK JACKET.