The Vision of Judgment

Lore & Background

Byron wrote The Vision of Judgment in Ravenna, Italy, beginning it on 7 May 1821 and completing it by 4 October. It was sent to John Murray, who hesitated and finally rejected it. Murray then passed it to the radical publisher John Hunt, who included it in the first number of his short-lived magazine The Liberal on 15 October 1822, minus Byron's preface which Murray had neglected to send. In this edition Byron's name was not used, the poem being said to be by 'Quevedo Redivivus' (Quevedo revived).

Reader's Guide

The poem was provoked by the High Tory point of view of Southey's work and by Southey's preface attacking those who had set up a 'Satanic school' of poetry. Byron responded with an attack on 'The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem', and referred to Southey as 'the author of Wat Tyler'. Reviews were generally vitriolic, with The Courier describing Byron as having 'a brain from heaven and a heart from hell'. Yet some 19th-century readers agreed with Byron's own assessment of it as 'One of my best things'. Goethe called it 'Heavenly! Unsurpassable!', and Swinburne wrote that it 'stands alone, not in Byron's work only, but in the work of the world.' As critic Geoffrey Carnall wrote, 'Southey's reputation has never recovered from Byron's ridicule.'

Did You Know?

• Byron wrote the poem in Ravenna, Italy, beginning it on 7 May 1821 and completing it by 4 October.
• The poem was published under the pseudonym 'Quevedo Redivivus' (Quevedo revived).
• A legal action was brought against publisher John Hunt for libel against George IV, even though the king is not mentioned in the poem; Hunt was fined £100.
• In the poem, Southey begins reading from his own Vision of Judgement, but angels and devils flee in disgust, and St. Peter knocks him back to Derwent Water.