EL3151A Romantic Celebrity Culture Student No.

: 1500033

Examine the self-fashioning of one Romantic-era writer.

“Sexy Bloodsuckers”: Lord Byron and Taylor Swift in the self-fashioning of sexualised celebrity

In an interview from 2009, Nina Dobrev, actress of the teen series The Vampire Diaries, commented
on the inherently ‘sexy’ nature of vampirism: the allure of the undead being the ‘same [as] why
women go for the bad boy — you want them but you shouldn’t have them’.1 Just as Dobrev articulates
eroticised vampirism associated with works succeeding Bram Stocker’s Dracula,2 the image of the
vampire in Byron’s 1813 poem, The Giaour, explores sexual desire as an unexplainable spectacle
isolated from morality. One of the earliest examples of the sexualised vampire in English literary
history, The Giaour illustrates the relationship between the celebrity and public as compulsive.
Byron’s imagery paradigms his self-fashioning as a poet after the publication of Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage, utilising sexualisation as a tool of popular attraction. Byron’s awareness of his overt
sexuality is seen in one of his lesser-known poems, posthumously published in 1898: ‘Egotism: A
Letter to J. T. Becher’ admits notoriety, sarcastically asking for forgiveness for the addictive sin of
seduction. Although thought to have been composed before Byron’s departure for Europe in 1809,3
that ‘Egotism’ appeared after Byron’s death suggests the poet’s conscious, but not publicised,
manipulation of his celebrity identity during his years of reputation.

When Kurt Heinzelman describes Byron as ‘the self-proclaimed opponent of all things Romantic’,4
he perhaps alludes to Byron’s focus on bodily sensuality foregrounded in The Giaour and ‘Egotism’.
Using personal experience as muse, Byron describes the Foucauldian concept of ‘pleasure […] not
considered in relation to an absolute law of the permitted and the forbidden […] but […] in relation
to itself’.5 Sexual attraction, Foucault argues, relies upon curiosity and its fulfilment:

[…] an immense curiosity about sex, bent on questioning it, with an insatiable desire
to hear it speak and be spoken about […]. As if it were essential for us to be able to

1
Nina Dobrev, qtd. Amanda FitzSimons, ‘Blood Diamond: Nina Dobrev in The Vampire Diaries’ WWD. 6
August 2009. http://wwd.com/eye/other/blood-diamond-nina-dobrev-in-the-vampire-diaries-2231319/
2
For further comment on this relationship, see Tanya Picula, ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Late-Victorian
Advertising Tactics: Earnest Men, Virtuous Ladies, and Porn’. English Literature in Transition 1880-1920
55:3 2012. 283-302
3
The actual date of composition is unknown, but considering that Byron departed for Europe in 1809, and
the poem was found in his ancestral home, it is assumed that it was written at the time of ‘Fugitive Pieces’
and ‘Hours of Idleness’. Similarly, Byron’s association with J. T. Becher dates between 1806 and
approximately 1809. To clarify these dates, see, Peter Cochran, Byron’s Correspondence And Journals 01:
From Newstead, Southwell, And Other Places In England: November 1799-July 1809. Newstead Abbey Byron
Society, 2012. https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/01-england-1791-180921.pdf
4
Kurt Heinzelman, ‘Lord Byron and the Invention of Celebrity’, Southwest Review, 93:4 (2008). 493.
5
Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Vol. 1, (London: Penguin, 1998), 57.

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draw from that little piece of ourselves not only pleasure but knowledge […]: a
knowledge of pleasure […]6
The allure of vampirism suggested by Dobrev parallels Caroline Lamb’s famous description of Byron
as ‘mad, bad - and dangerous to know.’7 The significance of this epithet in terms of the sexualising
trend in celebrity creation is fully understood when compared to a contemporary example. Taylor
Swift, notorious for ‘songs that exploit her personal life – from celebrity feuds to the short-lived
romance’, Mark Sweeney argues, offers ‘lessons in how to make a hit machine’,8 and mirroring
Byron, Swift offers tantalizing windows to an unrestrictive, corrupt imagination of ‘pleasure
knowledge’. The vampirical image in The Giaour, Swift’s 2015 single ‘Bad Blood’, and Byron’s
posthumous poem ‘Egotism’ suggest the way in which Byron and Swift explore their celebrity
‘selves’ as a product of sexual identity, fashioning themselves as both consumers of, and consumed
by, a culture infatuated with discovering the ‘real’ figure beneath the superficial layer of celebrity.

The writer’s visualisation of themselves is therefore a foundation on which to consider the self-
fashioning of celebrity. Commissioned in 1813, Richard Westall’s portrait of Byron (Fig.1) shows the
poet gazing outside of the frame, distracted by a thought separate from the immediate viewer. Leo

Figure 1: Richard Westall, George Gordon Byron,

6th Baron Byron, oil on canvas, 1813, 36 in. x 28 in.,
(London: National Portrait Gallery)

6
Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 77.
7
Duncan Wu, ‘Headnote to Lord Byron’, Romanticism, An Anthology, Fourth Edition, Chichester, Wiley
Blackwell, 2012. 865.
8
Mark Sweeney, ‘From Streaming to Selfies: What Taylor Swift has taught the music industry’. The
Guardian. Saturday 2 September 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/02/six-things-
taylor-swift-taught-music-industry-streaming-selfies.

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Braudy observes that Byron’s gaze looks towards ‘some grand and unimaginable goal of his own’9
and, that ‘[if] fame includes such an element of turning away from us, celebrity stares us right in
the face, flaunting its performance.’10 However, whilst Braudy implies that Byron pursues literary
fame, it is precisely in the aloofness of gazing at right angles to the portrait’s frame that Byron
flaunts celebrity. Byron’s turned head, enigmatic and cryptic, stimulates the desire for intimacy
Jeffrey Rice believes is central to celebrity culture as ‘overwhelmingly a culture of surface relations’.11
As Rice infers, Byron’s portrait fashions himself as an object of desire: youthful, handsome,
mysterious, but nonetheless, compulsive; a theme of coveted sensuality which translates into his
poetry. Rather than pursue static canonisation and fame, Byron evokes a sexualised image as a
device through which to ensure instantaneous desirability and centrality in celebrity culture.

The translation of Byron’s portrait into his poetry appears in The Giaour, a romance describing the
fate of Leila, a concubine, whose master Hassan, is murdered by her ‘infidel’ lover. Accused of
murder and infidelity, the lover is punished with eternal afterlife and lust for human blood:

But first, on earth as Vampire send,

Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife.12
In the erotic undertone of the giaour’s punishment, Byron draws upon social taboos of incest and
hematophagy, exploring sexual activity beyond culturally accepted norms. The giaour’s punishment
illustrates the commodification and aestheticization of sex: whilst the female body becomes a
disposable remnant of male seduction and passion, supernatural and amoral lust serve as justifiable
punishment for social dissent. There are parallels here to Byron’s romantic attachment to his half-
sister, Augusta Leigh. 13 Composed in synchrony with The Bride of Abydos, of which Byron claimed
to have written ‘to distract my dreams from * * [Augusta]’ writing that ‘had I not done something

9
Leo Braudy, ‘Knowing the Performer’, PMLA 126:4. 1072.
10
Braudy, ‘Knowing the Performer’, 1072.
11
Jeffrey Rice, ‘Celebrity, Literacy, the Alter Ego’, JAC, 26:1/2, (2006). 105.
12
Lord Byron, ‘The Giaour’, Lord Byron: The Major Works, ed. by Jerome J. McGann. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000. 207-242. ll.756-9. From this point, the extract I will be referring to is pp.227-228.
13
Byron’s infatuation with Augusta is described in Byron’s journal, dated 10 th March 1814. Peter Cochran
claims that the reference of ‘** is in my heart, ** in my head, ** in my eye, and the single one, Heaven
knows where’ describes Byron’s simultaneous liaisons with three married women: Lady Frances Webster
(head), Lady Annesley (eye), and a continuing, yet taboo, attachment to Augusta (heart).

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at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own heart’,14 The Giaour arguably evolved from
similar lustful torment. The association of intense passion with cannibalism or hematophagy
suggests that a corruption of the sexual imagination becomes the framework upon which the
alluring ‘bad boy’ Nina Dobrev describes takes literary form. Punished for his passions, Byron’s
vampire represents the sexiness of dissent.

Equating lust with violence perhaps provides Byron the opportunity to express dissatisfaction with
previous criticism. Hours of Idleness, published in 1808, was ridiculed for resembling ‘stagnant
water’, supposedly lacking ‘a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy’ necessary to constitute
a poetry.15 Offering a scene depicting the avid sexual energy of the undead male, certainly supplies
previous deficiency: ironically, by associating lust, afterlife, and violence, Byron fuels his poetry with
a dangerous and seductive energy. Swift’s promotional artwork for ‘Bad Blood’, a blood-splattered,

Figure 2: Promotional artwork for Taylor Swift’s “Bad

Blood (featuring Kendrick Lamar)” (Republic, 2015)
monochromatic portrait [Mediabase]
of a woman made pugnacious by ‘bad blood’ and ‘mad love’, echoes Byron’s
erotic vigour. Indeed, Swift’s lyrics arguably translate Byron’s poem into contemporary discourse:
‘Cause baby now we got bad blood
You know it used to be mad love
So take a look at what you’ve done

14
Lord Byron, Journal entry November 16th 1813, Byron’s London Journal, November 14th 1813-April 19th
1814, edited by Peter Cochran, Newstead Abbey Byron Society,
http://newsteadabbeybyronsociety.org/works/downloads/lon_journal.pdf
15
‘Art II: Hours of Idleness’, The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal. Vol. XI. October 1807 – January 1808.
Edinburgh: Archibald Constable & Co., 1808. 286

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‘Cause baby now we got bad blood16

‘Mad love’, a sadistic, overwhelming passion, is channelled into tropes of villainy, depicting Swift as
a violent, cold-blooded figure. In being both the protagonist of her own music, and the antagonist
in her dangerous, vampiric image, Swift similarly equates violence with pleasure; the concept
articulated by Nina Dobrev as desiring ‘the bad boy’. However, as Swift writes, ‘If you love like that
blood / Runs cold’:17 in being both protagonist and antagonist, Swift recognizes the consequential
juncture of desire and derision. To explore the limits of sexual fantasy, one must be distanced from
morality, and consequently, from congeniality. Simultaneously coveted and scorned, Byron and
Swift raise awareness of the ambiguity of celebrity, primarily a relationship between artist and
public based upon conflicting desires.

The association of blood to lust is one of surprising repetition in Byron’s years of fame. In an
unsettling yet moving letter to Byron from Caroline Lamb, enclosed with pubic hair, Lamb wrote:

I askd you not to send blood but Yet do – because if it means love I like to have it. I
cut the hair too close & bled much more than you need18
Lamb’s infatuation with Byron’s celebrity produces a vampiric sacrifice of blood; a gift to Byron’s
poetic charm. Similarly, ensuing from Lamb’s letter, Thomas Moore’s record of Lamb’s public self-
mutilation in July 1813 provided another example of the violence associated with sexual infatuation.

[…] tragi-comical circumstance I find she says is much misrepresented – that it was
merely the breaking of a scent-bottle or laudanum bottle that cut some part about
her, & the blood from which, […], gave rise to the story of her snick-or-snee work
with the knife – If this knife-work, however, be true, it clearly proves that she has
no serious designs of suicide – for, in the first place, chusing a ball-room for the
operation, has a little too much of Juvenal’s “aperté jugulat” and then again cutting
& hacking is not the way to kill one’s self19
It is interesting to read Lamb’s unsettling displays against Byron’s The Giaour:

Yet must thou end thy task and mark

Her cheek’s last tinge, her eye’s last spark,
[…]

16
Swift, T. (2014). ‘Bad Blood’, 1989. [CD] New York: Big Machine Records.
https://taylorswift.com/releases#/release/12453 [accessed 09 November 2017]
17
Swift, T. (2014). ‘Bad Blood’, 1989. [CD] New York: Big Machine Records.
https://taylorswift.com/releases#/release/12453 [accessed 09 November 2017]
18
Caroline Lamb, qtd. Clara Tuite, ‘Tainted Love and Romantic Literary Celebrity’, ELH 74:1 (2007). 59.
19
Thomas Moore to Byron, July 11 1813, Byron’s correspondence and journals 04: from London and other
places in England, ed. Peter Cochran, (2012) https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/04-london-
181310.pdf, 18-19.

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Then with unhallowed hand shalt tear

The tresses of her yellow hair,
[…]
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;20
Violence caused by passion is eroticised. In the corruption of his imagination, Byron utilises his
experiences of desire as poetic fuel. Lamb’s ‘cutting & hacking’ seemingly offers her blood as a
sacrifice to Byron as a celebrity, demonstrating the effect that Byron’s self-sexualisation had upon
his readers. Whilst Thomas Disch describes Byron’s love lyrics as ‘politically incorrect […] in the
way his art embodies the Male Gaze’,21 Caroline Lamb and The Giaour depict an idea more complex
than male objectification of women. Although Disch’s argument draws similarities between Byron’s
mistresses and the giaour’s innocent ‘yellow hair[ed]’ victims subject to man’s ‘unhallowed hand’,
Byron’s sexualises the very process of writing and reading. In a supposedly self-perpetuating cycle
of desire, seduction, and hematophagy, Byron creates an immortalised celebrity image: desired,
consumed, and accordingly, more greatly coveted precisely for his dangerous sexuality.

Foucault describes such sexual desires as an ‘absolute mastery of the body, a singular bliss,
obliviousness to […] the exile of death’.22 Within his description, Foucault suggests that sexual
prowess is dependent upon egotism, recognising ‘mastery’ in the self and believing one’s
imperviousness to death. Byron’s sensitivity to celebrity competition, or his own celebrity ‘death’,
emphasises Byron’s desire of ‘bodily mastery’. In a letter to his publisher, John Murray, Byron
provokingly boasts his importance to Murray’s profitability: “The works thou deemest most divine
-- / The ‘Art of Cookery’ and Mine”.23 Andrew Elfenbein comments that by associating his poems
with a popular cookbook, Byron acknowledges a similarly domesticated audience.24 For Byron, the
confines of bounded books held more than recipes to wifely domestication, but also the opportunity
to master his own sexual celebrity as well as the erotic fantasies of women. Indeed, writing in 1814,
Byron professes an indifference, yet fascination with women as ‘bodies’:

The more I see of men, the less I like them. If I could but say so of women too, all
would be well. Why can’t I? I am now six-and-twenty; my passions have had enough
to cool them; my affections more than enough to wither them25

20
Lord Byron, ‘The Giaour’, ll. 771-82.
21
Thomas Disch, ‘My Roommate Lord Byron’, The Hudson Review 54:4 (2002). 593.
22
Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 58.
23
Andrew Elfenbein, Byron and the Victorians, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 58.
24
Elfenbein, Byron and the Victorians, 58.
25
Lord Byron, Journal entry for 18th February 1814, Byron’s Correspondence and Journals 04. 113.

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Byron’s indifference to women, critiquing them for possessing ‘so much of “ideal” in practices, as
well as ethics’,26 elucidates Byron’s ability to intoxicate female audiences: by offering the counterpart
to idealised behaviour and moral, Byron became the id amongst societal super-ego. Much like his
giaour, exploiting individuals to satisfy blood-lust, Byron takes advantage of domestic
environments, providing romantic escapism from everyday mundanity. At once the arrogant
antagonist of Murray’s ability as a publisher and the hero of feminine desires, Byron infers his
relationship to his audience as described by Ghislane McDayter: ‘a passive vampiric force of
consumption’.27 By extension, rather than denote what Clara Tuite argues to be ‘the transformation
of the stranger into the intimate’,28 Byron’s poetry intoxicates, seduces, and exploits the virtues of a
domestic, wifely gender in vampiric pursuit of celebrity narcissism.

If Byron’s image of the vampire symbolises a commoditising relationship with his audience,
‘Egotism: A Letter to J. T. Becher’ demonstrates Byron’s shamelessness in objectifying and
merchandising poetic tradition. That ‘Egotism’ was first printed in E. H. Coleridge’s first volume of
The Works of Lord Byron in 189829 is significant in itself: posthumously published, the poem
becomes a stream of consciousness, commenting on the narcissism fuelling Byron’s poetry. Although
Byron’s 18o8 Hours of Idleness was described as poetry ‘belong[ing] to the class which neither gods
nor men are said to permit’,30 reading ‘Egotism’ posthumously casts a different perspective of
Byron’s work, echoing Foucault’s contention that the allure of sexuality lies in its distinction from
morality. Aware of the conflict between redemption and sin, ‘Whether for penance I should fast, or
/ Pray for my sins in expiation’,31 Byron nonetheless welcomes his promiscuity.

‘I’ve loved, and many damsels know it-

But whom, I don’t intend to mention,
As certain stanzas also show it,
Some say deserving Reprehension.32
It is perhaps ironic that Byron posits himself as the hero of ‘many damsels’, defying societal
convention by committing polygamy and describing his tabooed exploits, despite the threat of
‘reprehension’. His own Byronic hero, Byron does not insert himself into classical literary heritage:

26
Lord Byron, Journal entry for 36th November 1813, Byron’s Correspondence and Journals 04. 101.
27
Ghislane McDayter, qtd. Clara Tuite, ‘Tainted Love and Romantic Literary Celebrity’, ELH 74:1 (2007). 68.
28
Clara Tuite, ‘Tainted Love’. 63.
29
See Coleridge’s footnote to ‘Egotism’. 247
30
‘Art II: Hours of Idleness’, The Edinburgh Review. 285.
31
Lord Byron, ‘Egotism: A Letter to J. T. Becher’, The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. I, ed. Ernest Hartley
Coleridge, M.A. London: John Murray, 1898. 250, ll. 55-6.
32
Lord Byron, ‘Egotism’. 248, ll. 17-20.

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rather, by using his morally skewed experiences as muse, Byron is able to generate a novel poetic
tradition, glorifying pleasure removed from morality. In physically creating a space within literary
heritage for himself, Byron implies a sensitivity to being marginalised. The self-indulgence and
sensuality of his poetry acts as a vehicle to stimulate authorial fascination, metaphorically inserting
Byron’s autobiography into the homes and lives of his audience, and establishing a trend for, as
Mark Sweeney describes Taylor Swift’s music, ‘songs that exploit [one’s] personal life’ as the
ultimate tool for sustained celebrity intrigue.

When Byron melodramatically describes himself as ‘A victim, nearly from affection’,33 he indicates
towards the complex relationship between Byron’s sexual allure and his celebrity. Victimising
himself against a seemingly omnipresent threat of ‘affection’, Byron’s ironic helplessness serves to
emphasise his self-proclaimed ‘hero’ status. Both victim and hero of the battle between affection
and lust, Byron describes being attacked by the very desirability Westall’s portrait fabricated.
Byron’s sarcasm, however, does not reject ‘affection’, but rather embraces ardour as a defining facet
of his identity. Although Byron and Swift may juncture given Swift’s active rejection of her love-life
as defining her celebrity, the awareness both artists have of the influence of sexuality in their
relationship with an audience is parallel:

"I feel like watching my dating life has become a bit of a national pastime, […] I'm
just not comfortable providing that kind of entertainment anymore. I don't like
seeing slide shows of guys I've apparently dated. […] I don't like it when headlines
read 'Careful, Bro, She'll Write a Song About You,' because it trivializes my work.”34
Although Swift disregards the use of intimate experiences for artistic expression as trivialisation,
the sexual connotations of her promotional artwork suggest that it is not her sexuality which
trivialises her music, but intimacy. Embracing sexual identity, ‘anti-intimate’ in the sense that it
disregards public decency, acts as an addictive binary: both protagonist and antagonist, Byron and
Swift demonstrate celebrity as a figure desired, derided but nonetheless, constant in celebrity
recognition.

Byron’s unabashed egotism and Swift’s sexualised identity evolved from ‘bad blood’ fashion a
celebrity culture inherently associated with forbidden desire. Their ambiguity intoxicates their
audience and, torn between being lusted or loathed, Byron and Swift become the sexualised
vampires of a consumer desire for ‘pleasure knowledge’. Cerulo and Ruane claim that ‘celebrities
become reference points for individuals’ desires, and their behaviors become scripts that members

33
Lord Byron, ‘Egotism’. 249, l. 41.
34
Taylor Swift, qtd. Josh Ells, ‘The Reinvention of Taylor Swift’, The Rolling Stone. September 08 2014.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/taylor-swift-1989-cover-story-20140908

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of the public can try on or observe’:35 in line with such contention, Byron’s sensual self-fashioning
creates a model of which future participants of celebrity culture, such as Swift, have ‘tried on’ in
pursuit of instantaneous popularity and recognition.

In conclusion, the image of the vampire is more than supernatural imagination, but personifies the
relationship between artist and consumer in the process of celebrity culture; manufacturing a desire
towards the artist because of their unabashed embracement of forbidden eroticism. Byron’s self-
fashioning as a Romantic writer encapsulates the ‘literary vampire’ as a man of sexual prowess ‘fed’
by his public’s infatuation with carnal intrigue and ‘pleasure knowledge’. The importance of
sexuality in Byron’s self-image is seen in the self-centrism of his poetry. Akin to hematophagous
fulfilment, Byron uses himself as muse to dominate feminine fantasy and competitive market.
‘Egotism: A Letter to J. T. Becher’ distinguishes the significance of Byron’s sexuality to his writing:
pursuing a character for purposes of societal reputation, rather than a genuine expression of his
ability to love. Byron’s self-fashioning evolves a tradition of sexualised celebrity, the presentation of
the self as ‘untouchable but desirable’. Taylor Swift, as an example of Byron’s sexualised celebrity
heritage, evidences the way in which taboo subjects such as human vampirism, dominance,
subordination and violence are aestheticized for the purposes of enhancing artistic reputation.
Byron and Swift embody a perspective of celebrity culture which unites definitions of celebrity
timelessly: as ‘sexy bloodsuckers’, Byron and Swift demonstrate the allure of sex when isolated from
morality, utilised as a tool of commodification in pursuit of instantaneous celebrity.

2053 words

35
Karen A. Cerluo & Janet M. Ruane, ‘Apologies of the Rich and Famous: Cultural, Cognitive, and Social
Explanations of Why We Care and Why We Forgive’, Social Psychology Quarterly 77:2 (2014)’, 128.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources

Byron, Lord, ‘Egotism: A Letter to J. T. Becher’, The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. I, ed. Ernest Hartley
Coleridge. London: John Murray, 1898. 247-251.

Byron, Lord, ‘The Giaour’, Lord Byron: The Major Works, ed. by Jerome J. McGann. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000. 207-242.

Republic (2015). Promotional artwork for 'Bad Blood' (featuring Kendrick Lamar). [image]
Available at: http://headlineplanet.com/home/2015/05/17/artwork-revealed-for-taylor-swift-
kendrick-lamars-bad-blood-remix/ [Accessed 2 Nov. 2017].

Swift, T. (2014). ‘Bad Blood’, 1989. [CD] New York: Big Machine Records.
https://taylorswift.com/releases#/release/12453 [Accessed 9 Nov. 2017].

Westall, R. (1813). George Gordon Byron, 6th Lord Byron. [Oil on canvas] London: National
Portrait Gallery.

Secondary Sources

‘Art II: Hours of Idleness’, The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal. Vol. XI. October 1807 –
January 1808. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable & Co., 1808.

Cerulo, Karen A.; M. Ruane, ‘Apologies of the Rich and Famous: Cultural, Cognitive, and Social
Explanations of Why We Care and Why We Forgive’, Social Psychology Quarterly 77:2 2014). 123-
149.

Cochran, Peter (ed.) Byron’s Correspondence and Journals 01: From Newstead, Southwell, And
Other Places in England: November 1799-July 1809. Newstead Abbey Byron Society, 2012. Available
at: https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/01-england-1791-180921.pdf

Cochran, Peter (ed.) Byron’s Correspondence and Journals 04: From London and Other Places in
England, 1813. Newstead Abbey Byron Society, 2012. Available at:
https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/04-london-181310.pdf

Cochran, Peter (ed.) Byron’s London Journal, November 14th 1813 – April 19th 1814, Newstead Abbey
Byron Society, n.d. Available at:
http://newsteadabbeybyronsociety.org/works/downloads/lon_journal.pdf

Disch, Thomas M., ‘My Roommate Lord Byron’. The Hudson Review 54:1 (2002). 590-594.

Elfenbein, Andrew, Byron and the Victorians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Ells, Josh, ‘The Reinvention of Taylor Swift’, The Rolling Stone. September 08 2014.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/taylor-swift-1989-cover-story-20140908 [Accessed
2 Nov. 2017].

Foucault, Michel, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1998

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EL3151A Romantic Celebrity Culture Student No.: 1500033

Heinzelman, Kurt, ‘Lord Byron and the Invention of Celebrity’. Southwest Review 93:4 (2008).
489-501.
Rice, Jeffrey, ‘Celebrity, Literacy, the Alter Ego’, JAC, 26:1/2, (2006). 103-128.

Sweeney, Mark, ‘From Streaming to Selfies: What Taylor Swift has taught the music industry’. The
Guardian. Saturday 2 September 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/02/six-
things-taylor-swift-taught-music-industry-streaming-selfies [Accessed 31 Oct. 2017].

Tuite, Clara, ‘Tainted Love and Romantic Literary Celebrity’. ELH 74:1 (2007). 59-88.

Wu, Duncan, ‘Headnote to Lord Byron’, Romanticism, An Anthology, Fourth Edition. Chichester:
Wiley Blackwell, 2012. 862-871.

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