Summer in the Shadow of Byron

by Andrew McConnell Stott

Villa Diodati. 1816.

In a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and his young wife Mary, gathered for the summer. For three glittering months, this party of young bohemians would share their lives, charged with sexual and artistic tensions. It was a period of extraordinary creativity from which would emerge some of the masterworks of the Romantic period, including Frankenstein.

But there were two other guests at the villa that summer, for whom the season would not be so rosy. With Byron came his young physician, John Polidori, a man with literary aspirations of his own. And joining Mary was her step-sister, the beautiful Claire Clairmont. For Byron and the Shelleys, their stay by the lake would serve to immortalise them in the annals of literary history. But for Claire and Polidori, the Swiss sojourn would scar them forever.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Regency

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2015

About the author

Andrew McConnell Stott is the author of The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, which won the Royal Society of Literature Prize, the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography, and was a Guardian Best Book of the Year. The Poet and the Vampyre is his first book to be published in America. In 2011, Stott was named a Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He is a Professor of English at the University of Buffalo, SUNY.

Reviews

[Naomi Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this brilliant book about the two flawed unfortunates on the sidelines of Byron's Italian sojourn. Both very much wanted to be closer to the man: John Polidori, his juvenile doctor, fancied himself as a fellow writer (he had some talent but not a huge amount) but could never gain the poet's respect; Clair Clairmont decided that she must be the love of his life (and bore his child) but became the exact opposite. Mr McConnell Scott explores the complex relationships between the protagonists, who included, of course, Mary and Percy Shelley, with great skill and insight. The research is impeccable, the writing more than excellent. I have been promoted to inform myself more on Byron's life. Heartless b*****d doesn't come anywhere near. Thank you, AMS, for this. More please.

[Soupsioux · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author has published the same book with different titles, beware. It is a good book but only buy it once

[Peter]

Hmmm. 🤔🤨

[Ratka Vuksanović · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have erroneously thought that this book would concentrate on the three months that Byron, Claire Clairmont, Shelley, Mary and Polidori spent in Geneva and the tumultuous relationships between each one of them that resembled some sort of a seven degrees of separation game. I was especially looking forward to learning something more about that "ghost night" that inspired Mary to write Frankenstein. Having read both Byron's and Shelley's biographies, I have to admit that there was nothing new in this book. Shelley and Byron are just passers-by (especially Byron) while the writer makes an effort to emphasize Claire and Polidori (Polidori in particular). I was also unpleasantly surprised that the book of 460-something pages is actually a solid 230 and the rest is bibliography...So, in a nutshell, for somebody not particularly informed about these poets and their circle, this might be a good introduction but for somebody who's looking for more, this book will not offer much. If you really want to know who Byron and Shelley were (all the details, peculiarities, mysteries, "gossip" etc. then read Byron's biography by Fiona McCarthy (which is excellent!) and Shelley's by Richard Holmes. Since I love Byron (the man, the myth and the legacy) so much, I've given this book 4 stars but in reality it's probably worth 3.