'McGann's style is vivid and animated, exuberant even … [he] makes the reader feel, while immersed, that nothing could be more important than the task in hand … he writes not only to evoke poetic excellences, but also to make a timely intervention … You may not always agree with his diagnosis of what needs to be done, but you never end a piece by McGann without feeling that you've been put through your paces and are better for it.' Seamus Perry, Times Literary Supplement
1. Don Juan and the English language; 2. Byron Agonistes, 1809–1816; 3. Manfred: one word for mercy; 4. Byron and the 'Wrong Revolutionary Poetical System'; 5. Byron, Blake, and the adversity of poetics; 6. The stubborn foe: bad verse and the poetry of action.