Lord Byron and the Free Press: A Burkean Outlook?

This article endeavours to resolve the apparent inconsistencies between Lord Byron’s advocation of the free press and his suppression of the revolutionary press in Missolonghi. The novel approach uses a methodological framework based on recent studies on Byron’s forms of thinking and Edmund Burke’s ideas on prudential judgement and rejection of metaphysical abstraction in political matters. After a brief outline of Byron’s experience of censorship and a short analysis of The Vision of Judgement, his clash with Stanhope and motives to suppress The Greek Chronicles are investigated. The set of ideas articulated by Burke is used as a prism to interpret Byron’s actions and resolve prima facie inconsistencies. Overall, it is suggested that Byron’s relativist and sceptical outlook was subtly Burkean in regard to the free press, a framework that could be used in future research to resolve further questions in Byron studies.