Roderick S. Speer's Books

Byron and Scott

The Waverley Novels and Historical Engagement

By: Roderick S. Speer

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Byron and Scott

The Waverley Novels and Historical Engagement

By: Roderick S. Speer

Literary historians have repeatedly observed that while Scott as a poet was the first British literary lion of the nineteenth century, his fame was supplanted by Byron as a poet starting in 1812. But that is as far as they take the relationship seriously, for the two writers are traditionally thought of as very different, even as political and temperamental opposites. But in fact, the two writers met each other in 1815, liked each other, and cherished their friendship the rest of their lives. The story of their relationship in personal terms was not over. Nor was the literary relationship, this study ventures. Scott embarked on an entirely new career in 1814, inventing the historical novel. Byron was swept away by these “Waverley novels,” and in his years of exile to the Continent from 1816 on, repeatedly beseeched his publisher to send Scott’s latest novels. The position here is that those novels were important to Byron’s development in both literary and existential respects. Byron’s historical dramas, his Don Juan, The Island, and his final fling, into the Greek Revolution, show an evolution of both the Byronic Hero and Byron himself in a context his friend Scott had opened up for him.

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125

Publisher

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

144380939X

ISBN 13

9781443809399

Democracy's Lawyer

Felix Grundy of the Old Southwest

By: J. Roderick Heller III

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Democracy's Lawyer

Felix Grundy of the Old Southwest

By: J. Roderick Heller III

A central political figure in the first post-Revolutionary generation, Felix Grundy (1775--1840) epitomized the "American democrat" who so famously fascinated Alexis de Tocqueville. Born and reared on the isolated frontier, Grundy rose largely by his own ability to become the Old Southwest's greatest criminal lawyer and one of the first radical political reformers in the fledgling United States. In Democracy's Lawyer, the first comprehensive biography of Grundy since 1940, J. Roderick Heller reveals how Grundy's life typifies the archetypal, post--founding fathers generation that forged America's culture and institutions. After his birth in Virginia, Grundy moved west at age five to the region that would become Kentucky, where he lost three brothers in Indian wars. He earned a law degree, joined the legislature, and quickly became Henry Clay's main rival. At age thirty-one, after rising to become chief justice of Kentucky, Grundy moved to Tennessee, where voters soon elected him to Congress. In Washington, Grundy proved so voracious a proponent of the War of 1812 that a popular slogan of the day blamed the war on "Madison, Grundy, and the Devil." A pivotal U.S. senator during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, Grundy also served as Martin Van Buren's attorney general and developed a close association with his law student and political protégé James K. Polk. Grundy championed the ideals of the American West, and as Heller demonstrates, his dominating belief -- equality in access to power -- motivated many of his political battles. Aristocratic federalism threatened the principles of the Revolution, Grundy asserted, and he opposed fetters on freedom of opportunity, whether from government or entrenched economic elites. Although widely known as a politician, Grundy achieved even greater fame as a criminal lawyer. Of the purported 185 murder defendants that he represented, only one was hanged. At a time when criminal trials served as popular entertainment, Grundy's mere appearance in a courtroom drew spectators from miles around, and his legal reputation soon spread nationwide. One nineteenth-century Nashvillian declared that Grundy "could stand on a street corner and talk the cobblestones into life." Shifting seamlessly within the worlds of law, entrepreneurship, and politics, Felix Grundy exemplified the questing, mobile society of early nineteenth-century America. With Democracy's Lawyer, Heller firmly establishes Grundy as a powerful player and personality in early American law and politics.

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Page Count

622

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807146099

ISBN 13

9780807146095

Byron and Scott

The Waverley Novels and Historical Engagement

By: Roderick S. Speer

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Byron and Scott

The Waverley Novels and Historical Engagement

By: Roderick S. Speer

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

125

Publisher

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

144380939X

ISBN 13

9781443809399

Book's by Roderick S. Speer

Byron and Scott

Byron and Scott

Democracy's Lawyer

Democracy's Lawyer

Byron and Scott

Byron and Scott

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