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Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life

by Edna O'Brien

3.18 · rating details · 143 ratings · 49 reviews

“How long it’s taken for these two mad, bad and dangerous writers to get together!”—Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle

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 Soc...more

Paperback, 228 pages

Published June 14th 2010 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published January 15th 2009)

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Sep 04, 2011

Martine Peacock rated it

· review of another edition

This book jumped off the library shelf at me because though I've heard of Byron, I knew little more than that he was 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' and consorted with his sister, so I thought it was time to find out more. Well, the boy certainly was dangerous to know - he had more cases of the clap than a year's intake at the GUM clinic. If he came strolling through my front door, I wouldn't touch him with a bargepole!

The book was simply unputdownable - but I've a notion this was ...more

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Nov 13, 2010

Jennifer Munro rated it

· review of another edition

A great book for its brevity and a quick overview of Byron's life, but truly one of the worst edited books I have read. In parts of it, I could actually hear the author typing her rough draft notes into the computer--the prose suddenly fell into present tense fragments (and if it was a stylistic choice rather than poor editing, it didn't work for me). Gross mistakes--referring to one character as a cousin on one page and as a nephew later on (I admit, it's hard to keep track of these Byrons, sin...more

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Sep 16, 2009

Christia rated it

· review of another edition

Until I read O’Brien’s biography, I really didn’t know much about Byron, other than some of his better known poems (She Walks in Beauty is one of my favorites) and his bad boy reputation, but he is a literary figure that I’ve always been interested in, mainly because of his legendary larger than life image. Although apparently Carolyn Lamb’s description of him as “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” is well known, I had not heard it. By the end of the book I realized it was also pretty darn accur...moreUntil I read O’Brien’s biography, I really didn’t know much about Byron, other than some of his better known poems (She Walks in Beauty is one of my favorites) and his bad boy reputation, but he is a literary figure that I’ve always been interested in, mainly because of his legendary larger than life image. Although apparently Carolyn Lamb’s description of him as “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” is well known, I had not heard it. By the end of the book I realized it was also pretty darn accurate.

No one can deny that he lived his life to the fullest, like a candle burning at both ends, and quite honestly, considering the mental instability, suicidal urges, the drinking, and sexual escapades too numerous to count, I’m surprised he survived as long as he did – to his mid thirties. I remember studying the Romantic poets in high school, and Byron being presented as the epitome of a true Romantic, one who was most definitely “in love with the idea of love.”

One of the few things I liked about Byron was his ever present menagerie of animals, from his pet bear at Cambridge to all the pets listed as part of his possessions that were noted with each sea voyage. In college I remember coming across a poem he wrote as a tribute to his beloved Newfoundland after it died, and it appears he may have treated his pets better than he did the people in his life.

O’Brien traces all of his affairs with both male and female lovers, starting as early as boarding school, then while at Cambridge, then as an adult. She describes affair after affair, including his relationship with Annabella, the woman who would eventually become his wife (although Byron insisted “marriage is the graveyard of love”) and live to regret it; Augusta, possibly his greatest and most scandalous love, despite the fact that “Mad Jack” was both her father as well as Byron’s; the mentally unstable Carolyn Lamb who would become the wife of the future British Prime Minister Melbourne; the Italian Countess Teresa, who was so besotted with Byron she obtained papal approval to separate from her husband; and poor Clare Cartwright (stepsister of Mary Shelley), among others, who fathered his illegitimate daughter Allegra, who, like her mother, was severely neglected by Byron even after he insisted on sole custody.

Byron was anything but a gentleman, but he was no doubt a genius and quite a colorful character. His behavior and escapades are so outrageous they are almost unbelievable, and it is no wonder he is remembered as one of if not the original “bad boy” celebrity. I have 2 other books about Byron on my bookshelf, and after reading this first biography, I am eager to read them both soon.
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Nov 08, 2009

karen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: what-would-byron-do

byron is just not that into you. it doesnt matter what you do - hes just not that into you. he might put his baby in you, but he will leave you as soon as you start going into labor and return later only to shoot bottles in your living room while you strain and bleed to produce a creature he will hardly look at. because he is not into you. he will allow you to risk your life by being his mistress while your husband who has already buried two wives under suspicious circumstances fumes and observe...morebyron is just not that into you. it doesnt matter what you do - hes just not that into you. he might put his baby in you, but he will leave you as soon as you start going into labor and return later only to shoot bottles in your living room while you strain and bleed to produce a creature he will hardly look at. because he is not into you. he will allow you to risk your life by being his mistress while your husband who has already buried two wives under suspicious circumstances fumes and observes. because he does not care about you. he will seduce you while letting you believe it was all your idea and then take the resulting child and pop it into a convent where it will die without you ever getting to see it again. because he doesnt give a shit about you. he will allow you to destroy your place in society and humiliate yourself in order to try to regain the few months of passion he allowed you and then smirk as he reads your book about him as your dignity recedes further and further. because he does not care for you at all. and why not? because you are not his sister. end of story.

byron is like one of those plants in nature that pretends to be something beautiful and broken in order to lure any would-be predator in and then attack. so what is it that fascinates me so? is it that his relationship with lady melbourne/lady frances mirrors the plot of my beloved les liaisons dangereuses? is it the purely cinematographic allure of the wedding-night bed on fire and byron believing himself to be in hell? is it the cruelties inflicted for no reason other than his own selfish obliviousness to that which is outside himself? what makes me adore byron, yet want to smack tucker max like crazy? is it just the talent of his writing? it is distance? or fashion? because in reality,i would never become involved with a man who drank from skulls and had bears and wolves and monkeys running around while his anorexic highness forced me to watch him bed his sister and shoot our chandelier with his pistols. i have tried to mostly avoid the overly dramatic lunatic when picking partners. however, if byron came knocking, who could say?
if this is going to be your only bio of byron, i say go for it. for you, it is four stars worth. for me, i am going to see if i can get my hands on that three-volume leslie marchand biography and see about putting this moth-to-a-candle thing he has going on for me to rest.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
a temporary, partial review until i get back to ny. im a little over the halfway point of reading - i expect train ride home will finish this off for me, if i am able to break my weeklong stretch of not being able to concentrate on any book for more than 4.3 minutes. however, the thing that is striking to me at this point, as someone who has read a fair amount of byron: primary sources, bios, fictional bodice-rippers, etc. -is her lack of self-awareness. she at one point quotes one of byrons earliest reviews for his poetry: "we would entreat him to believe that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem, and that a poem in the present day, to be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree different from the ideas of former writers or differently expressed." so far, im not sure what she brings to the table with this book that i havent read elsewhere. its such a small-sized biography for such a huge life. its just - except for the lollipop-color byron on the cover, i dont know what makes this stand out. but i have my journey ahead of me - ill let you know at the other end.(less)

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Feb 23, 2009

bestiaries rated it

· review of another edition

The country girls author takes a look into the world of a rather gigantic poet.The word byronic, to this day conjures up sybaritic images of excess, a rebelliousness and a reluctance to answer to anyone.

Byron as a prototype existentialist y/y? In any case I would have loved to be around for some of his more debauched moments.

...

Here is a description of a get together not long after he moved into his ancestral seat, the gothic newstead abbey.

"...moreThe country girls author takes a look into the world of a rather gigantic poet.The word byronic, to this day conjures up sybaritic images of excess, a rebelliousness and a reluctance to answer to anyone.

Byron as a prototype existentialist y/y? In any case I would have loved to be around for some of his more debauched moments.

...

Here is a description of a get together not long after he moved into his ancestral seat, the gothic newstead abbey.

"Be mindful to go there in broad daylight and with your eyes about you. For, should you make any blunder,should you go to the right of the hall steps, you are laid hold of by a bear, and should you go to the left your case is still worse; for you run into a wolf! Nor, whem you have attained the door, is your danger over;for the hall being decayed and therefore in standing need of being repaired, a bevy of inmates are very probably banging at one end with their pistols; so that if you enter without giving loud notice of your approach; you have only escaped the wolf, and the bear to expire by the pistol shots of the merry monks of newstead.

…as for our way of living, the order of the day was generally this;-for breakfast we had no set hour, but each suited his own convenience, everything remaining on the table until the whole party had done;though had one wished to breakfast at the early hour of ten, one would have been rather lucky to have found any of the servants up. Our average hour of rising was one. I…was always…the first of the party, and was esteemed a prodigy of early rising…Then, for the amusements of the morning, there was reading, fencing.single-stick or shuttle-cock, in the great room; practising with pistols in the hall; wLking-riding-cricket-sailing on the lake, playing with the bear, or teasing the wolf. Between seven and eight we dined, our eveing lasted…til one,two or three in the morning…I must not omit the custom of handing round,after dinner, on the removal of a cloth,a human skull filled with burgundy, After revelling on choice viands and the finest wines of france,…A set of monkish dresses, which had been provided. With all of the proper apparatus of crosses,beads, tonsures etcetera, often gave a variety to your appearance and to our pursuits."

He kept his menagerie [including at various times;a bear,monkeys, peacocks, hens, parrots, always a lot of dogs:] and his menáge with whoever was around him at the moment throughout his life. He dies in his 37th year fighing for greece's independance from turkey; in a letter to his sister at the time he recalls that a fortune teller once predicted he would meet his end at such an age.

This book,although short is a densely packed read, and is giving me cause to seek out Thomas Moore sizeable collection of his letters, I imagine it will be like following someone's internet blog, only far more interesting and with a couple of hundred years of hindsight.(less)

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May 07, 2009

Joe rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, gay, poetry

I lived in Athens, Greece, for a while, and shopped in the neighborhood of Byronas, named for Lord Byron. I didn't know much about him other than he was a British poet who went to Greece to help her win independence from the Ottoman Empire. Having read this book, I now know more, of his wild mood swings, him whims, his frivolity, his lack of care for societal norms. And a lot about his love affairs, with women and men. A lot of them! Whew! I only rated this book two stars, though, because of the...more

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Sep 23, 2011

Orna Ross rated it

· review of another edition

This biography adds nothing to our knowledge of Lord Byron. With no bibliography or references, it falls short of contemporary academic practice -- which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if O'Brien had brought a novelist's insight and sensibility to the tale. Unfortunately, no.

I can see why O'Brien, the Irish high-queen of florid love, would be attracted to Byron - as man and as writer - and as she was restricting the work to an examination of his behaviour in love (and lust), I ex...more

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Jun 22, 2011

Jake rated it

Shelves: biography, non-fiction

Edna O’Brien’s writing style perplexes me. I remember being mystified by it when I read her excellent novel House of Splendid Isolation. I felt this disconnect again while reading Byron in Love. I was impressed with the tightness of the plot and the lack of excess in her prose. The trade off is I tended to feel a bit detached and unemotional while reading this book. At times, Ms. O’Brien’s poise and restraint as a novelist unduly bridled the sauciness of Byron’s story.

When I read Ms...moreEdna O’Brien’s writing style perplexes me. I remember being mystified by it when I read her excellent novel House of Splendid Isolation. I felt this disconnect again while reading Byron in Love. I was impressed with the tightness of the plot and the lack of excess in her prose. The trade off is I tended to feel a bit detached and unemotional while reading this book. At times, Ms. O’Brien’s poise and restraint as a novelist unduly bridled the sauciness of Byron’s story.

When I read Ms. O’Brien, I feel like I’m staring in through a mildly warped window at the characters. The scene appears slightly blurred and the sounds are a bit muffled. It is like O’Brien has me off to the side, watching from a discreet distance--as one might do when witnessing a couple argue in public. It’s a compelling style, but not the one I would pick for a biography of Lord Byron--especially one that is delivered like a novel. Yet I still feel this is a great book.

O’Brien’s unvarnished recounting of Byron’s scandals, as well as his chauvinism, challenged me (though I retain my affinity for him). I don’t believe one can take a serious look at Byron without acknowledging his great failures as a father and husband. But it also makes me consider one of the callous byproducts of traditional marriage culture. No child should ever be termed “illegitimate”, even when born out of wedlock to irresponsible parents.

This book also reminded me--as any objective biography of Byron should--of the rampant and abrasive hypocrisy that emanates from intensely heterosexual cultures. Byron could have been subjected to the death penalty for his homosexual liaisons. But when he engaged in heterosexual adultery, he was just fitting in. Ms. O’Brien brings this harsh double standard into sharp relief.

My chief complaint with this book is grammatical. O’Brien’s abrupt shifts between present and past tense annoyed me. Given her abilities and authorial maturity, I have to think the shifts were deliberate. I just found them acutely distracting. Other than that, I don’t have anything much to fault, except my lingering sense of disconnectedness with Byron in Love.

I’ll sum it up with an analogy. I love the musical Les Miserables. I also love composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim. But even on his best day, providing his finest work, I cannot imagine Mr. Sondheim musicalizing Les Miz to my satisfaction. There is simply an incongruity between his style and the way my heart yearns to experience that story. This also sums up why I didn’t fall head over heels for Ms. O’Brien’s take on Byron, though I found the book excellent. In any case, I feel the definitive portrayal of Byron was written long ago, though its main character is a childe called Harold.
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Jan 28, 2011

Elizabeth Sulzby rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: historicalfiction

A very short, highly readable book about Lord Byron, largely drawn from letters and other contemporary records. The ending was a let-down because O'Brien had built such a strong picture of Byron's wild and destructive side. She had not built such a documentation of his writing, rather treating the reader as if s/he knew them well already. At the very ending, she sort of let the dichotomies "settle themselves." I still found this an excellent book. One part I would have rather have...more

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Aug 19, 2009

Jennifer rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

You can only hear Lady Caroline Lamb's description of the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron--"mad, bad, and dangerous to know"--so many times before you're to the point of, O.K., tell me everything or let's just stop carrying on about him. Well, this book does just that, and let me tell you, he was very, very bad indeed. Some might say this book verges on the voyeuristic, but I'm not sure where to draw the line with this deliberately outsized Romantic personna who was so publicly naught...more

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Oct 17, 2009

Audacia Ray rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: cultural-studies, read-in-2009

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 no...more

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Oct 11, 2009

Maria rated it

· review of another edition

Edna O'Brien's biography of Lord Byron is the latest of many biographies on the poet. Her reason for bringing us yet one other biography of Byron is, in her words, "to follow him in his Rake's Progress and his "Poet's Progress, playing billiards in an English country house and passing clandestine notes to a young bride under the very watch of her pontifical husband, Sir Wederburn Webster, Byron reading Madame de Stael's 'Corinne' in the garden of his Italian mistress and writing her a ...moreEdna O'Brien's biography of Lord Byron is the latest of many biographies on the poet. Her reason for bringing us yet one other biography of Byron is, in her words, "to follow him in his Rake's Progress and his "Poet's Progress, playing billiards in an English country house and passing clandestine notes to a young bride under the very watch of her pontifical husband, Sir Wederburn Webster, Byron reading Madame de Stael's 'Corinne' in the garden of his Italian mistress and writing her a love letter in English, which neither she nor her jealous husband would understand. Byron seized with melancholia and Byron in intermittent 'phrenzy' with his forbearing publisher John Murray. Byron who mapped for himself a great and tragic destiny, going as he thought 'to the seat of war', when he set out to join in the cause for Greek independence, and instead dying of a fever in a swamp in Missolonghi at the age of thirty-six, the face that had been the Adonis of all Europe covered in leeches and bandages."

In a style that is fast-paced and intense, O'Brien careens through Byron's complicated and flawed life in little over 210 pages. Byron was a gigantic poet who was unable to exist without some object of love. He was five feet eight and a half inches in height, with a deformed right foot and a handsome face and demeanor that neither men nor women could resist. He loved men and women. Everything about him, as O'Brien, describes him and his life is Promethean. His life was one of excesses and his relationships filled with passion, excitement, melancholy, and foreboding for the loss that was inevitably to come. His father, "Mad Jack" Byron was an absent father and his 22-year old mother, Catherine Gordon, was disinherited by her family when she ran off to marry 'Mad Jack' and ended up giving birth to Byron in a rented room above a shop in London, attended only by a nurse, midwife and a doctor. Byron blamed his mother for his club foot, and his overall relationship with her was, in fact, harsh to the point of cruel. Mother and son lived in poverty until Byron's tenth year, when news reached them that young Byron's Wicked Uncle, Lord Byron died leaving no other heir than George Byron, who became the sixth Lord Byron.

Young Bryon's whole childhood changed as a result of his peerage. At school he would be given wine and cake by the headmaster, and for his mother the ennoblement of her son was a dizzying ascent into a new world and one in which she would become her son's "minion and a tenant in her son's house."

The remainder of the book moves the reader rapidly from one passionate entanglement to another, following Byron to his castle in Scotland, down to London, onto the Continent where he visited Greece and Istanbul, and Italy, ending finally in Greece, where Byron died of a fever in Missolonghi.

While O' Brien writes with great craftsmanship, I gave this book three stars because while it was at times amusing and covered most of Byron's escapades and entanglements, it rarely touched me. The book was a testimony to Byron's excesses, restlessness, and amorous relationships -- even with his half sister, Augusta, with whom he had a child. The book was written as if Byron was a famous star and we were being given titillating tidbits about his life without ever deepening into the real person of Byron. I did not feel I came to "know" Byron and therefore feel empathy for him. Moreover, Byron's claim to fame is as much a life lived to its extremes, as it is his poetry -- and to to his poetry there is hardly a mention, other than to tie the development of his epic poem to particular times and events in his life. As the book progresses, there is a kind of repetition -- returning again and again to relationships begun and ended, and events that seemed to lead nowhere -- and I found myself getting impatient and bored -- the opposite, I think, of the effect O'Brien was trying to create. I had begun this book with much anticipation (as someone who had read Byron's poetry and found there expressed sublimely emotions about love, loss, despair) and concluded it disappointed.(less)

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Aug 18, 2009

Andy rated it

· review of another edition

Lord Byron was a prolific poet, but perhaps his most lasting contribution to humankind is to demonstrate once and for all that hedonism really isn’t a particularly rewarding lifestyle. Well, sure, who hasn’t wanted to shoot pistols in the dining room and drink wine from human skulls, but thanks to Byron, we know better, don’t we? (O’Brien says that after Byron’s friend Percy Bysshe Shelley died in a sailing accident, his skull very narrowly avoided becoming part of Byron’s drinkware collection.)...more

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May 23, 2010

Lauren Albert rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: biography-autobiography

As O'Brien portrays him, Byron is quite a repulsive man--vain, cruel, self-centered. The book is fun in a seedy sort of way--but don't read it if you want a complete life of Byron. The author focuses almost entirely (as the title should make you expect) on Byron's love life. My one criticism of the book is that her portrait doesn't really explain the effect he had on people, male and female, who fell for him right and left. Could his looks have really been enough to cause this?

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Mar 18, 2010

Cialan rated it

· review of another edition

Writing was slightly irritating. Lots of endless sentence fragments strung together with commas but that's not what you remember. Byron is like any rich celebrity--only made more famous by his antics. At least he left some good writing behind when he died at age 37.
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move;
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
The fire that on my bosom preys
...more

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Jul 01, 2009

Victoria (vikz) rated it

· review of another edition

As a teenager, I had two literary heroes. The first was lord Byron and the second was Edna O'brian. They both seemed rebellious, exotic and they both talked about sex and relationships, something that preoccupies most teenage girls. Or least they pre-occupied me as a teenager. So, this book held much promise and it didn't disappoint.

While the story was familiar,becoming the stuff of legend, o'brian's poetic voice and novelistic eye added another dimension.

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Jan 30, 2010

Yooperprof rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: biography, britain, poetry

No footnotes or bibiliography.

Okay, I know it's a short book, not meant to be a scholarly tome, more an impressionistic daub. But for a life as controversial as Byron's, the reader really does deserve to know where the information is coming from.

Also, there are places in the text where O'Brien's prose is awkward and confusing. I wonder if they allowed her to get away without a copy editor because she has such a name herself in literature.

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Oct 19, 2009

Sbaird rated it

· review of another edition

"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.

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Nov 21, 2010

R. rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: biography

Ok, so not yet 18 years old, Byron trundles off to his "super excellent" rooms at Trinity College Cambridge with his pet bulldog. The dog proved too viscous, so he replaced it... with a bear! Depite my love for the audadicty, yet I find myself more repulsed than attracted to this man who imposed no limits upon his own behavior. He is the Paris Hilton of the early 19th century and I can't help but speculate that, like her, would have died a poor, obscure, syphilitic, were it not for th...more

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Jan 18, 2010

Amanda rated it

· review of another edition

Not written in the typical historical voice I expected, and the book was exceedingly slim... just over 200 pages. Well done, but with no family trees, helpful hints or anything more than vague descriptions of familial and conjugal associations, making the novice Byron reader a bit at a loss at times. Overall: worth reading, since it won't take up too much time.

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Jul 26, 2009

Sarah rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: biography, books-about-literature, british, historical-nonfic, 2009

Reads like a romp--a quick, breezy, torrid look at Byron's rather active love life. Don't read if you would like to hang onto a view of him as the dreamy romantic hero-poet, a cad maybe, but a dashing, charming, sensitive, misunderstood cad. He sounds here like someone you would totally hate if you knew him. However, I've said it before, I'll say it again: miserable and/or horrible people make for far more interesting biographies than happy, well-adjusted ones.

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Oct 26, 2011

Kathy Petersen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: x-feb-11-thru-jan-12, read-non-fiction

My goodness, O'Brien is no admirer of the promiscuous Lord Byron. And if all she writes is true, and I have no reason to dispute her, who can blame her? She did fashioned quite a good book out of his enormous number of affairs despite a preponderance of run-on sentences. She made few comments on his poetry, and not many about his life outside the bedroom: hence the title!

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Nov 13, 2011

Tyler Lawrence rated it

· review of another edition

The only redeeming thing about this book is its subject matter - Byron lives up to his billing. But the writing is horribly convoluted at times, and O'Brien has a way of lumping so many people together that you almost need to keep a list of them to make sure you've got them all straight.

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May 12, 2010

Iris rated it

· review of another edition

This book was very dry and disappointing. I stuck with it because I was desperate to hear about the story behind "She Walks in Beauty," and when I finally got to that point in the book there was ONE sentence devoted to it. Soooo incredibly frustrating. The author went into great detail on boring topics, and quickly glossed over the more interesting ones. She also didn't include much of the actual poetry that Byron wrote. I didn't think this book would be an anthology, but I though...more

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Sep 07, 2011

Judith rated it

· review of another edition

What an intriguing man who wrote such lovely poetry. He packed a lot of living into a short life. The book is well-written, but tedious at times. His voluminous writings, mostly in the form of letters and a journal provide a rich source of information about him.

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Jul 23, 2011

Margaret Sankey added it · review of another edition

Mad, bad and dangerous to know, especially if you were a half-sister, heiress, Turkish boy, Italian Revolutionary, radical feminist, Whig politician, Greek Revolutionary, publisher or school friend with a shilling...mad, bad and dangerous to know pretty much covers it.

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Aug 13, 2009

Miranda rated it

· review of another edition

What begins as a charming dandy devolves into cynical monster and abuser of women. Edna O'Brien's biography skims through Byron's affairs with little contextual reference; it's not a book to begin to learn about Byron's life, certainly, but charming and lively in its way. However, by the end I was just as depressed as Byron probably was, mucking about in those Messolonghi swamps.

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Jun 26, 2009

Maggie rated it

· review of another edition

Somewhat cursory, always lyrical, fascinating without being torrid. My only complaint is about her sentences, which sometimes run off a comma when a semi-colon or period would be preferred.

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Aug 18, 2009

e.a. rated it

· review of another edition

I gave up on this book. I will tell you why with a joyously annoyed review when I have the emotional energy for it.

The short of it is: what a petty, shallow gesture of exploration of a person who did not need to seem even MORE petty and shallow.

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Nov 17, 2011

Jen rated it

· review of another edition

A well-written short biography of the "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" poet. O'Brien relies on Byron's letters to delve into his personality, with an emphasis on his childhood and on his later (numerous) romances.

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Edna O'Brien was born in Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland in 1930, a place she would later describe as "fervid", "enclosed" and "catastrophic". According to O'Brien, her mother was a strong, controlling woman who had emigrated temporarily to America, and worked for some time as a maid in Brooklyn, New York for a well-off Irish-American family before returning to Irel...moreEdna O'Brien was born in Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland in 1930, a place she would later describe as "fervid", "enclosed" and "catastrophic". According to O'Brien, her mother was a strong, controlling woman who had emigrated temporarily to America, and worked for some time as a maid in Brooklyn, New York for a well-off Irish-American family before returning to Ireland to raise a family.
In 1950, she was awarded a licence as pharmacist. She married, against her parents' wishes, in the summer of 1954 to the Czech/Irish writer Ernest Gébler and the couple moved to London. They raised two sons, Carlos and Sasha, but the marriage was dissolved in 1964. Gébler died in 1998. In Ireland she read such writers as Tolstoy, Thackeray, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The first book O'Brien ever bought was Introducing James Joyce by T.S. Eliot. She has said that Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man made her realize that she wanted to pursue literature for the rest of her life.
She published her first book, The Country Girls, in 1960. This was the first part of a trilogy of novels (later collected as The Country Girls Trilogy) which also included The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). Shortly after their publication, these books were banned, and in some cases burnt, in Ireland due to their frank portrayals of the sex lives of their characters.
Her novel A Pagan Place, published in 1970, was about her childhood in a repressive Irish town. Indeed, her parents were vehemently against all things related to literature -- her mother strongly disapproved of Edna's career as an author, which greatly troubled Edna. In 1981 she wrote a play, Virginia, which was about Virginia Woolf and was staged originally in Canada and subsequently in the West End of London at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Maggie Smith and directed by Robin Phillips. It was subsequently staged at the Public Theater in New York in the spring of 1985. Other notable works were a biography of James Joyce, released in 1999, and a biography of poet Lord Byron, "Byron in Love," published in 2009.
She has received numerous awards for her works, including a Kingsley Amis Award in 1962, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 1990 for Lantern Slides.
In 2006, Edna O' Brien was appointed adjunct[1] professor of English Literature in University College Dublin [2]. In 2009, Edna O’Brien was honoured with a special lifetime achievement award - the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award - at a special ceremony for the year’s Irish Book Awards in Dublin.[3]
She was also one of the panelists for the first edition of the BBC programme Question Time in 1979.(less)

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