Byron: Life and Legend [Hardcover]

Fiona MacCarthy's biography of Byron is a masterpiece of detail, insight and scholarship of a high order. It has already been acclaimed by the best critics as more than equal to her other fine biographies of Eric Gill and William Morris, and is a worthy successor to Lesley Marchand's definitive three-volume study, also published by John Murray. MacCarthy not only had the advantage of access to new material from the Murray archive, but her 're-assessment' of Byron's personal life benefited from being able to write without the severe restrictions and discretion placed upon earlier biographers, Marchand included. As a result, the inner conflicts and turmoil of Byron's life and loves emerge with a clarity and poignancy denied to earlier interpretations.

The life unfolds chronologically, the chapter headings specifying the countries and places representing the periods of Byron's life associated with them: Cambridge 1805-7, London and Brighton 1808-9, Greece and Constantinople 1809-10, and so on. The author's intellectual grasp and unstinting devotion to verifiable fact, all this no doubt enhanced by her five-year 'pilgrimage' through the countries of Europe visited by Byron, lends authority and an authentic flavour to the style and language. The many references to correspondence, together with quotations from the poetry, are made with due regard to their relevance to particular places, people and events, the writer's occasional interpretative comment being well justified by her soundly-based acquaintance, and indeed intimacy, with the scope of her subject.

Such considered commentary, always unobtrusive, is necessary as much to the craftmanship and thematic working of the book as a whole, as it is to achieving a natural coherence and fluency in the language. For example, Byron tasted the 'excitements' of gambling, encouraged by Scrope Davies, his Cambridge friend: "For Byron excitement was a state of bliss, in all respects preferable to inertia. Each turn of the card and each cast of the dice created life-enhancing tension. A gambler always lived in hope." Here there is a hint of symbolism, an insight into the risks and rewards of an adventurous life. Similarly, the description of a memorable episode involving the shooting dead of the Military Commander of Ravenna, Captain Luigi dal Pinto, in the street close to Byron's residence, later followed by an assassination attempt on Byron himself, concludes with the observation: "But what interested Byron most about the murder was not the local politics but the underlying strangeness, what it said about the human condition. What was the dividing line between a life and a death, he wondered as he sat beside the oddly tranquil body of the physically courageous but unpopular Dal Pinto....?" The comprehensive and meticulous 'Sources and Reference Notes' provide the searching reader with page by page elucidation of the text, this further amplified by an excellent Index highlighting persons, locations, works and attributes.

This book will delight not only the literary scholar but also the critical general reader who is prepared to expend a certain mental effort in tackling what after all is a solid testament to a literary genius, a figure no less heroic than the Napoleon he emulated. The author eschews emotionalism and allows the drama of a life to speak from within itself: herein lies the writer's art. The characters themselves come to life in all their paradoxical humanity, whether it be - to name but a few - the absurdly capricious (and vindictive) Lady Caroline Lamb, fellow-poet and 'brother outcast' Shelley, the loyal and protective Hobhouse, or Countess Teresa Guiccioli, Byron's most 'enduring' mistress, with whom he conducted an affair 'in an atmosphere of stealth and potential skulduggery'.

More controversial is MacCarthy's treatment of Byron's passionate friendships with adolescent boys, a subject either ignored, glossed over or minimised by previous biographers. Here, the interpretation - of ambiguous and sometimes sketchy evidence - is that these liaisons were central to the poet's emotional and sexual life, rather than the many, often flamboyant, affairs with women. Doris Langley (in her `Lord Byron: Accounts Rendered') argues the opposite: that women were his main emotional focus, while his boy-friendships are seen as mere diversions. MacCarthy's view is persuasive inasmuch as an `innate sexual orientation towards boys explains many of the lingering puzzles of his history.' The necessity of concealment thus lay behind `the dazzling obfuscations of his writing', as for example in the `Thyrza' poems addressed to the Cambridge chorister, John Edlestone.

What is irresistible is the idea of the nature of love as paradoxical, of passion and conflict as bedfellows, and the force with which the complex themes of raw emotional power and humanity resonate through the pages. 'Byron Life and Legend' is beautifully produced and superbly illustrated. It is now an indispensable part of Byronic lore, and a 'sine qua non' for literary collections and libraries.

I really enjoyed this book! what an adventurous & poetic life. Having been a fan of poetry for many years I found it hard to identify with Byrons poetry, until I read this story.