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The Regency period in general, and the aristocrat-poet Lord Byron in particular, were notorious for scandal, but the historical circumstances of this phenomenon have yet to be properly analysed. Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity explores Byron's celebrity persona in the literary, social, political and historical contexts of Regency Britain and post-Napoleonic Europe that produced it. Clara Tuite argues that the Byronic enigma that so compelled contemporary audiences - and provoked such controversy with its spectacular Romantic Satanism - can be understood by means of 'scandalous celebrity', a new form of ambivalent fame that mediates between notoriety and traditional forms of heroic renown. Examining Byron alongside contemporary figures including Caroline Lamb, Stendhal, Napoleon Bonaparte and Lord Castlereagh, Tuite illuminates the central role played by Byron in the literary, political and sexual scandals that mark the Regency as a vital period of social transition and emergent celebrity culture.

The love story of Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb has traditionally functioned in literary history to confirm Byron's seductive fatality and Lamb's banality. This essay engages the Lamb-Byron affair in order to highlight the complexity and symbolic power of Lamb's performances as a social and literary celebrity. It argues that the social and textual performances that mark the affair as a public event raise critical issues about the relations between private and public in the romantic literary marketplace, about the sociality of romantic literature and love, and about the interrelations between romantic literature, romantic love, and romantic-period scandal.

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