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Death’s Jest-Book his dramas from contemporaries in this revival genre is his selfdirected irony; certainly in the richly satirical Jest-Book, but even in the early Brides’ Tragedy, there is no complacent acceptance of the early modern form, but a questioning dialogue with earlier styles that Beddoes typically expresses in his skilful use of controlled anachronism. Beddoes is aware, painfully so in many of his confessional letters, of his failure to renew the poetic drama and set it alight once more. Tropes of grave-robbing, dismemberment, haunting and galvanism reverberate through his many accounts of his writing process (and still continue today in postmodern critical interpretations).

Beddoes seems to have conceived and begun Death’s Jest-Book in the summer of 1825, at roughly the same time as he embarked for the German states to begin his medical training at the University of Göttingen. In June he wrote from Oxford to his friend, later to be his literary executor, Thomas Forbes Kelsall, with his first announcement of the new tragedy:

I do not intend to finish that 2nd Brother you saw but am thinking of a very Gothic-styled tragedy, for wh I have a very jewel of a name —

DEATH’S JESTBOOK — of course no one will ever read it — Mr. Milman (our poetry professor) has made me quite unfashionable here, by denouncing me, as one of a ‘villainous school’. (p. 604) Clearly proud of and excited by the title he has hit upon, Beddoes is also apparently encouraged by the disapproval of authority figures such as Henry Hart Milman. He is noticeably cheerful as he reflects on the likelihood that no one will read the new drama: this ironic attitude to the prospects of publication, readership and fame were to grow steadily graver and more intense throughout the next two decades. In July 1825 Beddoes travelled to Germany and began his studies at Göttingen; we next hear of the Jest-Book in December, when he writes to Kelsall, excusing his recent lack of correspondence by detailing the industries of his average working day:

Up at 5, Anatomical reading till 6 — translation from English into German till 7 — Prepare for Blumenbach’s lecture till 9 — Stromeyer’s lecture on Chemistry till 10. 10 to 1⁄2 p. 12, Practical Zootomy — 1⁄2 p. 12 to 1 English into German or German literary reading with a pipe — 1 to 2 Anatomical lecture. 2 to 3