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lexsven's review
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Ever since I watched Red, White , & Royal Blue and they mentioned that Lord Byron was bisexual I wanted to learn more about Byron. I feel there are so few representations of LGBTQ+ individuals in the way that we tell history, though we are getting better about including that side of individuals stories, and to have such a megalith of a name be mentioned as being bi I was intrigued. I had tried to find some biographies of Byron but the ones I had found were out of my proce range, that is until I was at my local library and noticed this book. I knew I had to check it out and give it a read.
I learned that Byron lived a wild life of many lovers and in many places. He indeed was involved with both men and women, but this book says that most of his major relationships were with women. One being his half sister which really through me for a loop. His last lover though was a man, who seemed to have been not really all that interested in Byron and actually. found him unattractive and old at the age of 36 which I'm sure must have been hard for Byron as this book mentions that he was though of as beautiful for most of his life. The book, to provide context for his relationships, talks of Byron's life and different things that shaped him. One such thing being that he had a club foot which I had never heard of before and I definitely think that that made him ore reckless as a way to prove to others he could keep up and even be ahead. And how his life affected his writings like Child Herald's pilgrimage.
I also liked how the book told about the lovers a little bit as well as their own people and not as extensions of Byron's life. In Italy his lover had to almost be restrained by the pope for her love of Byron. Hi actual wife was young and sheltered and so very happy to be marrying Byron but in a childish way that showed she knew nothing of her future husband at all. She tried to lean on Byron's half sister, not knowing of their relationship and then how the half sister did nothing to help with her pleas. It was all very dramatic and I enjoyed it.
While this book was very informative, I did not love the writing style and when I first started reading it was kind of hard to follow the sentence structure and so I had to slow down more than I like to. This book was also very dry and so while it was short, it seemed to drag which sucked because the topic is so interesting but that spark was dampened by a lack of excitement.
I learned that Byron lived a wild life of many lovers and in many places. He indeed was involved with both men and women, but this book says that most of his major relationships were with women. One being his half sister which really through me for a loop. His last lover though was a man, who seemed to have been not really all that interested in Byron and actually. found him unattractive and old at the age of 36 which I'm sure must have been hard for Byron as this book mentions that he was though of as beautiful for most of his life. The book, to provide context for his relationships, talks of Byron's life and different things that shaped him. One such thing being that he had a club foot which I had never heard of before and I definitely think that that made him ore reckless as a way to prove to others he could keep up and even be ahead. And how his life affected his writings like Child Herald's pilgrimage.
I also liked how the book told about the lovers a little bit as well as their own people and not as extensions of Byron's life. In Italy his lover had to almost be restrained by the pope for her love of Byron. Hi actual wife was young and sheltered and so very happy to be marrying Byron but in a childish way that showed she knew nothing of her future husband at all. She tried to lean on Byron's half sister, not knowing of their relationship and then how the half sister did nothing to help with her pleas. It was all very dramatic and I enjoyed it.
While this book was very informative, I did not love the writing style and when I first started reading it was kind of hard to follow the sentence structure and so I had to slow down more than I like to. This book was also very dry and so while it was short, it seemed to drag which sucked because the topic is so interesting but that spark was dampened by a lack of excitement.
mindsplinters's review against another edition
medium-paced
2.0
Well... It was a book. It was a messy, rambling, manic book that clearly and thoroughly documented the love life of one George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron. Who was one hell of a poet and one devil of man as most of those with any English Lit background know. It had the content but I just could not get behind the style of delivery. It was all rambling sentences, dangling participles, effusive adjectives. Very hard to follow at times. Almost as if the author was trying to be poetic. It was interesting but not quite to my reading taste.
At least the author did not shy away from what an asshole Byron was - even if it was still presented as to be tempered with his rather screwed-up home life, etc.
At least the author did not shy away from what an asshole Byron was - even if it was still presented as to be tempered with his rather screwed-up home life, etc.
audaciaray's review against another edition
4.0
Oh, Lord Byron. Sigh.
I was seriously obsessed with Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley when I was in high school. Why yes, I've seen Gothic about a million times. Also, on my first solo trip to Europe, I visited some of their haunts in Switzerland & Italy, saw Keats' death mask, locks of their hair... I'm a nerd, I know.
There are a number of biographical tomes on Byron, and this is one of the most easily digestible ones. And that's not just because it is normal-book-sized instead of phone-book-sized. As the title suggests, the book focuses on Byron's love life - which was, uh, active to say the least. He was quite fickle with his affections, but though he bounced from one lover to the next (both men and women, though in his poems references to male lovers are concealed with female names), each love was passionate bordering on (and often crossing the border) insane.
Byron was a massively selfish, spoiled, and self-obsessed man. He was all kinds of abusive to the women who fell for him and got more deeply entangled with him than his usual 2 week to 2 month affairs (his wife; the mother of his daughter Allegra). I was reading this book as the Tucker Max movie was debuting and getting all kinds of well-deserved flak from feminists, and it made me look at Byron thru Tucker Max tinted lenses. Byron was an entitled dickhead, a destructive force in many ways, not unlike Tucker Max (um, except that Byron was a MUCH better writer).
That said, I can't help but love and swoon over Byron. Maybe its a fucked up nostalgia for my teen years. Maybe it's my romanticization of the Romantics and the nineteenth century in general. But even though he was a total dick, Byron - with his anorexia, his mental health problems, his club foot and chestnut hair, and his predilection for pets like bears and wolves - occupies this fantasy space for me that I won't give up even though it's irrational.
I was seriously obsessed with Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley when I was in high school. Why yes, I've seen Gothic about a million times. Also, on my first solo trip to Europe, I visited some of their haunts in Switzerland & Italy, saw Keats' death mask, locks of their hair... I'm a nerd, I know.
There are a number of biographical tomes on Byron, and this is one of the most easily digestible ones. And that's not just because it is normal-book-sized instead of phone-book-sized. As the title suggests, the book focuses on Byron's love life - which was, uh, active to say the least. He was quite fickle with his affections, but though he bounced from one lover to the next (both men and women, though in his poems references to male lovers are concealed with female names), each love was passionate bordering on (and often crossing the border) insane.
Byron was a massively selfish, spoiled, and self-obsessed man. He was all kinds of abusive to the women who fell for him and got more deeply entangled with him than his usual 2 week to 2 month affairs (his wife; the mother of his daughter Allegra). I was reading this book as the Tucker Max movie was debuting and getting all kinds of well-deserved flak from feminists, and it made me look at Byron thru Tucker Max tinted lenses. Byron was an entitled dickhead, a destructive force in many ways, not unlike Tucker Max (um, except that Byron was a MUCH better writer).
That said, I can't help but love and swoon over Byron. Maybe its a fucked up nostalgia for my teen years. Maybe it's my romanticization of the Romantics and the nineteenth century in general. But even though he was a total dick, Byron - with his anorexia, his mental health problems, his club foot and chestnut hair, and his predilection for pets like bears and wolves - occupies this fantasy space for me that I won't give up even though it's irrational.
mkesten's review against another edition
3.0
Might as well get it out of the way from the beginning: Charles Gordon, Lord Byron, was a bad boy. Today we would consider him a serial rapist, pedophile, bankrupt, political meddler, philanderer, adulterer, effete, alchoholic, bearer of sexually transmitted diseases, slanderer, and libeller. Back in the early 19th century he would also have been considered a criminal for committing incest and sodomy, although sodomy today doesn't have the same cache it once did, except maybe in Saudi Arabia and Russia.
This is the poster boy for the Romantic Movement and possibly the first celebrity in the modern sense. This is the man your kids are studying in those demure liberal arts colleges in New England. And like modern celebrities, he got away with it all.
In "Byron in Love," Edna O'Brien captures much of the hero worship that accompanied him from his early 20's right up until his death after catching a cold at 37.
Although he was born into wealth, a libertine father drove his family into poverty. Then, with the death of an heirless uncle, he inherited the title and accompanying wealth. At the age of 10! Sort of like winning the lottery. In a big way.
Already in his teens he fathered a bastard, compensated for a birth deformity by learning how to fight with his fists at boarding school, and keep within close reach a boxing coach. Bully? You might say that.
He took his seat in the House of Lords and made a few speeches championing liberal causes. And he was always one step ahead of his creditors. Of which there were many.
And he wrote. For the day, he wrote shocking and shockingly beautiful poetry. And this drove the girls (and the boys) crazy. So crazy in fact, the Pope sent spies to trail him during his years in Italy seducing maidens and matrons alike.
This is the poster boy for the Romantic Movement and possibly the first celebrity in the modern sense. This is the man your kids are studying in those demure liberal arts colleges in New England. And like modern celebrities, he got away with it all.
In "Byron in Love," Edna O'Brien captures much of the hero worship that accompanied him from his early 20's right up until his death after catching a cold at 37.
Although he was born into wealth, a libertine father drove his family into poverty. Then, with the death of an heirless uncle, he inherited the title and accompanying wealth. At the age of 10! Sort of like winning the lottery. In a big way.
Already in his teens he fathered a bastard, compensated for a birth deformity by learning how to fight with his fists at boarding school, and keep within close reach a boxing coach. Bully? You might say that.
He took his seat in the House of Lords and made a few speeches championing liberal causes. And he was always one step ahead of his creditors. Of which there were many.
And he wrote. For the day, he wrote shocking and shockingly beautiful poetry. And this drove the girls (and the boys) crazy. So crazy in fact, the Pope sent spies to trail him during his years in Italy seducing maidens and matrons alike.
smbla's review against another edition
3.0
"Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know"...sums up Lord Byron and this quote is by one of his lovers-Caroline Lamb. O'Brien's portrait is more on the lines of an article for Vanity Fair-short, salacious, and forgiving of all of his rock star faults. I felt no closer to understanding Byron as an artist or a man after reading her work but I also could not put it down.
marshaniemeijer's review against another edition
could not get through this writing (been a week of really giving it a go) and i am trying out this new thing where i do not stay with anything that isnt giving me joy!
emma_ireland's review against another edition
2.0
Considering what a colourful life Byron led, it must have taken some skill for Edna O'Brien to produce a book so abysmally dull. Disjointed sentences, (at times) pretentious language, and a switching back and forth between tenses that added nothing to the already irritating writing style. And then there's Byron himself, painted so atrociously that it's impossible to understand what on earth any of the women unfortunate enough to wind up in his bed saw in him. Due to it being mercifully short, there's very little of depth to be found in this book, so that I was left feeling that I'd scanned Byron's Wikipedia page rather than read an analysis of the man "in love." It comes off as a list of people he shagged, places he visited (complete with zoo animals and his own bed), and which STDs he managed to pick up en route - with occasional sprinklings of poetry and a rich topping of violent outbursts. There have to be better Byron biographies than this out there. Find one.
blueyorkie's review against another edition
5.0
Lord Byron's full name is George Gordon Noel Byron, born in London on January 22, 1788. In 1798 he inherited the noble title of Great-Uncle William, becoming the sixth Lord Byron. Still a student at Cambridge, he published his first book of poetry, Hours of Idleness, as it has always been poorly received by critics such as the prestigious Edinburgh Review. Byron responded with the satirical poem "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers". At the age of 21, he entered the Chamber of Lords, shortly afterwards on a journey through Europe and the Middle East.
Upon returning to England, in 1811, he published the first two songs by Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, in Portuguese in the year 1812 with the name “Pilgrimage of Childe Harold”, a long poem in which he narrates the wanderings and loves of a disenchanted hero, at the same time. The time when it describes the nature of the Iberian peninsula, Greece and Albania. The work was immediately successful, between 1812 and 1819 11 editions in English were published, in addition to several translations, and its fame was consolidated with other works. In these poems, of exotic plots and despite the irregularities, Byron confirmed his talent for describing environments.
In Switzerland he wrote Childe Harold's Pilgrimage's song III in 1816, The Prisoner of Chillon, in Portuguese, The Prisoner of Chillon (1816) and the dramatic poem Manfred (1817), enigmatic and demonic. In Geneva, he lived with Claire Clairmont and became friends with Shelley. He also travelled to Venice, where he led an agitated and licentious existence, documented in letters full of verve.
He then composed the song IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818) Beppo, a Venetian story, poem in octave rhyme, with a slight and caustic tone, in which he ridiculed Venice's high society. In 1819 the hero-comic poem Don Juan (1819-1824) began a brilliant and daring satire, in the manner of the 18th century, which he would leave unfinished. In the same year, he joined the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, following her to Ravenna where, together with her brother, he participated in the conspiracies of the carbon arises.
Upon returning to England, in 1811, he published the first two songs by Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, in Portuguese in the year 1812 with the name “Pilgrimage of Childe Harold”, a long poem in which he narrates the wanderings and loves of a disenchanted hero, at the same time. The time when it describes the nature of the Iberian peninsula, Greece and Albania. The work was immediately successful, between 1812 and 1819 11 editions in English were published, in addition to several translations, and its fame was consolidated with other works. In these poems, of exotic plots and despite the irregularities, Byron confirmed his talent for describing environments.
In Switzerland he wrote Childe Harold's Pilgrimage's song III in 1816, The Prisoner of Chillon, in Portuguese, The Prisoner of Chillon (1816) and the dramatic poem Manfred (1817), enigmatic and demonic. In Geneva, he lived with Claire Clairmont and became friends with Shelley. He also travelled to Venice, where he led an agitated and licentious existence, documented in letters full of verve.
He then composed the song IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818) Beppo, a Venetian story, poem in octave rhyme, with a slight and caustic tone, in which he ridiculed Venice's high society. In 1819 the hero-comic poem Don Juan (1819-1824) began a brilliant and daring satire, in the manner of the 18th century, which he would leave unfinished. In the same year, he joined the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, following her to Ravenna where, together with her brother, he participated in the conspiracies of the carbon arises.