Byron and the Lake Poets

Abstract

This essay examines Lord Byron’s response to the poetry, politics, and personas of the Lake Poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. It explores Byron’s career-long sense of rivalry, admiration, and opposition towards the Lakers and how these responses influenced his own works and his poetic identity. It argues that Byron sought to define himself and his poetry against this trio of poets, presenting himself as a poet of oceans rather than lakes, as a man of the world, and as a writer of global subject matter and importance. It discusses Byron’s critique of the Lakers for misdirecting their poetic talents through their chosen subject and styles of writing, as well as for betraying the liberal causes they had espoused in their early careers. It concludes with discussions of Don Juan and The Vision of Judgment as the brilliant culminations of Byron’s complex engagement with the Lake Poets.