Synopses & Reviews
Acclaimed biographer of James Joyce Edna O"Brien has written an intimate biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic pleasures of Greece and Turkey, culminating in his meteoric rise to fame at the age of twenty-four on the publication of
Childe Harold. With her prismatic eye and novelistic style, O"Brien eerily captures the spirit of the man and creates an indelible portrait of Byron that explodes the Romantic myth. From his escapades with John Edleston, the fourteen-year-old Cambridge choir boy, to those with a galaxy of women that included his half-sister, his wife of one year, and the Italian countess who forsook her satyr-like husband for 'the peer of England and its greatest poet,' Byron scandalized the world and inspires 'Byronmania' to this day. Byron, as brilliantly rendered by O"Brien, is the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, and defiantly immortal.
Review
"Few writers are better suited than [Edna O'Brien] to take his measure, and to plumb his heart." Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller
Review
"[A] mischievously complicit biography." Kathryn Harrison
Review
Succinct and eloquent. --Kerstin Parmley
Review
[A] mischievously complicit biography. --Kathryn Harrison
Review
"Succinct and eloquent." New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
With her prismatic eye and novelistic style, O'Brien eerily captures the spirit of the man and creates an indelible portrait of Byron that explodes the Romantic myth.
Synopsis
Acclaimed biographer of James Joyce, Edna O'Brien has written a "jaunty" () biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic pleasures of Greece and Turkey, culminating in his meteoric rise to fame at the age of twenty-four. With "a novelist's understanding of tempo and characterization" (), O'Brien captures the spirit of the man and creates an indelible portrait that explodes the Romantic myth. Byron, as brilliantly rendered by O'Brien, is the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, and defiantly immortal.
Synopsis
From one of our greatest novelists comes this luminous portrait of the world"s first literary rock star.
Synopsis
"How long it's taken for these two mad, bad and dangerous writers to get together!"--Alan Cheuse,
About the Author
Edna O'Brien, the author of The Country Girls Trilogy, The Light of Evening and Byron in Love, is the recipient of the James Joyce Ulysses Medal and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in London.