After Shakespeare the most famous British author in Europe, in Britain Byron was for years either neglected, or a victim of the myth of his own personality. Now he is read and studied both for his complex politics and as a forerunner of many of the ideas and techniques more usually associated with post-modernism. Bone tackles the critical problems both of the populism of much of Byron's early work, and conversely of the sophisticated comedy of Beppo, Don Juan and The Vision of Judgement.