From the publication of the first two cantos of Don Juan in 1819, the poem’s legal status was in doubt. Although never found blasphemous or seditious in a criminal court, Byron’s copyright in Don Juan was not upheld by the civil courts, owing to the possibility that the poem might be ‘injurious’ to the public. Alongside these courtroom debates, Byron and his poetry came under increasingly intense scrutiny before the figurative ‘tribunal of the public’, in periodicals and newspapers. Reviewers and commentators appraised Don Juan in the vocabulary of the criminal law, assuming the roles of advocate, jury and judge. This article analyses some of these legal and quasi-legal attacks, and investigates how Byron engaged with them. Don Juan, I propose, bears traces of the legal pressures Byron faced, absorbing the threat of criminal prosecution and exploring the question of what an oppositional statement of self-defence might look like.

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Satire and libel have always been closely linked, but in the anxious political climate of the Romantic period, the relationship came under new pressure. This article examines the fraught connection between satire and libel through a case study: a quarrel between the Irish radical Peter Finnerty and George Manners, editor of the loyalist Satirist, or Monthly Meteor. In February 1809, Finnerty brought an action for libel against the magazine, known for its scurrilous articles. Surprisingly he won his case, but received a pittance in damages. The dispute points to the fluidity between the law courts and the press in this period; indeed, Manners considered satire a necessary supplement to legislative authority in correcting social deviance. With Manners’ scurrilous magazine an embarrassment to more respectable Tories, the two men’s argument sheds light on the uncomfortably close proximity of the figures of the ‘satirist’ and the ‘libeller’ in the early nineteenth century.

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This chapter has four sections: 1. General and Prose; 2. The Novel; 3. Poetry; 4. Drama. Section 1 is by Joseph Turner; section 2 is by Fiona Milne; section 3 is by Dylan Carver; section 4 is by Ashley Bender.