Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life

by EdnaO'Brien (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $4.74

  Acclaimed biographer of James Joyce, Edna O'Brien has written a jaunty (The New Yorker) 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 (Miami Herald), 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.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.68

  'Edna O'Brien has always had a gift for writing about affairs of the heart' Guardian
  
  'Her boldly coloured portrait rewrites his life with all the brio and elan for which her novels are renowned' The Herald
  
  'Hugely enjoyable' Daily Telegraph
  
  BYRON IN LOVE - the nobility, arrogance and sheer theatre of Byron's life.

  Byron, more than any other poet, has come to personify the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, reaching beyond race, creed or frontier, his gigantic flaws redeemed by a magnetism and ultimately a heroism that by ending in tragedy raised it and him from the particular to the universal.

  Everything about Lord George Gordon Byron was a paradox - insider and outsider, beautiful and deformed, serious and facetious, profligate but on occasion miserly, and possessed of a fierce intelligence trapped forever in a child's magic and malices. He was also a great poet, but as he reminded us, poetry is a distinct faculty and has little to do with the individual life of its creator.

  Edna O'Brien's exemplary biography focuses upon the diverse and colourful women in Byron's life.

  'O'Brien charts the many loves of the notorious 19th-century poet's reckless life in immediate and candid prose' Sunday Telegraph
  
  'A beguiling blend of sympathy, humour and, of course, her signature lilting style . . . a delightful, though poignant, account' Main on Sunday

  'There is much to enjoy in this idiosyncratic and highly readable account of the poet whose writing enthralled and whose actions appalled in equal measure' Independent

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $3.29

  Bryon's name is part of the English language. The word 'Byronic' suggests excess, diabolical deeds and a rebelliousness answering neither to king nor commoner. Byron, more than any other poet, has come to personify the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, reaching beyond race, creed or frontier, his gigantic flaws redeemed by a magnetism and ultimately a heroism that by ending in tragedy raised it and him from the particular to the universal. Lord George Gordon Byron was 5' 8 in height, had a malformed right foot, chestnut hair, a haunting pallor, grey eyes fringed with dark lashes and an enchantedness that neither men nor women could resist. Everything about him was a paradox - insider and outsider, beautiful and deformed, serious and facetious, profligate but on occasion miserly, and possessed of a fierce intelligence trapped forever in a child's magic and malices. He was also a great poet, but as he reminded us, poetry is a distinct faculty and has little to do with the individual life of its creator. Edna O'Brien's vivid biography is beautifully spare, exemplary in its concision, and focuses upon the diverse and colourful women in Byron's life. Its narrative core is the triangular relationship between him, his wife and his half-sister that brought him his timeless notoriety. Edna O'Brien and Byron are surely the perfect match, and in Byron in Love the novelist has made a portrait of the poet that is admiring, gently ironic, funny and perceptive John Banville