Fashion, Self-Fashioning and the Body

Abstract

Throughout his brief life Lord Byron attracted the gazes of others – because he was disabled, because he was a lord, because he was a literary idol, because “at least a third part of the day, [he] was a dandy” (Stendhal quoted in HVSV 201), because he was fat, because he was thin, because of his beauty or because his appearance disappointed. Byron was surveyed, prepared himself to be surveyed and surveyed himself internally. His own self-fashioning, as author, as part-time dandy and as athlete (pugilist and swimmer especially), took place in the context of his experiences in his own body, but his self-fashioning takes place for us, above all, in his words.