Death's Jest-Book is the extravagant expression of Thomas Lovell Beddoes's lifelong obsession with mortality and immortality, a surrealising of Renaissance revenge tragedy, alight with
treachery, murder, sorcery and haunting. Conceived as a satirical tragedy unmasking the terror of death, it contains some of the most powerful dramatic blank verse by any of the British
Romantics.
After early acclaim as a lyric poet and dramatist, Beddoes (1803-49) is only now emerging from a century and a half of neglect. This is the first affordable modern edition to present the
Jest-Book in its earliest complete form, as Beddoes intended to publish it in 1829. The text is supplemented by Michael Bradshaw's introduction, notes and outline of the publication history.
