Customer Reviews

Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame

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Please do not buy this book. As an academic whose specialty area is Lord Byron, I urge you to avoid this sensationalist and poorly written work at all costs. It is, aside from anything else, full of small mistakes regarding dates, etc. If you are looking for a reliable recent biography of Byron, buy the Fiona Macarthy book before you buy this one. If you are willing to spend more and hunt more, and don't mind a book that, because of the time when it was written, scants the issue of Byron's complex sexual tastes, the undoubted go-to bio is Leslie Marchand's three volume work from 1957. Old, but still the best.

To begin with, the more exacting reviewers are correct in their assertions that there is nothing new here, aside from Eisler's "spin" on previously well-known facts about the infamous and lionized Poet and Lord. This book is definitely NOT for those interested in a thorough, searching delve into Byron and his poetry. But, moreover, it is not even the "page-turner" which other reviewers make it out to be.

The book is written in this precious, cozy, semi-academese which drains the blood from the writing. There is no evaluation of the poet in the context in the particular developmental stage of English poetry at the time. And Shelley, in particular, gets a particularly curt dismissal.---But the real problem with this biography is not that Eisler is dismissive of other (in Shelley's case, better) poets or that her book is simply a rehashing of previously known circumstances. The problem is her plodding, lifeless, cutesy writing style. By the end of the book, one feels that Ms. Eisler has appropriated Byron into her cozy world of popularized, made-for-giant-publishing-houses beach-read bios. Has anyone else noticed that all the chapters are almost the exact number of pages in length? Such precise compartmentalization does not for the reflection of a life make, in particular Byron's!

The one merit this book indisbutably does have is to make you want to read or reread Byron's poetry. Eisler's citations of neatly culled snippets are the only lively thing in the book! So, after you've read all about the minutiae of the poet's life and feel drained and off-put at the end:

Close thy Eisler! Open thy Byron!

I became interested in Byron after reading a brief biography of the poet in a women's magazine which mentioned, among other things, the shocking fact that Byron had indulged in incest with his half-sister and fathered a child by her. Could this, I wondered, be true? And if so, why had none of my English teachers bothered to mention this titillating detail (there being no better way to motivate kids to read than by sharing prurient, violent, or otherwise scandalous of disgusting tidbits with them)?

Fortunately for me, my step-mother is a scholar of Byron, and, on hearing of my interest, she promptly sent me Eisler's biography of Byron, which, weighing in at over 800 pages, promised to satisfy my need for prurience in spades.

As it turns out, I did enjoy Eisler's biography and the portrait that she paints of the poet, his contemporaries, and his travels. Byron's reputation as a literary bad-boy seems to have been richly deserved. Eisler chronicles his early homosexual interests, his penchant for getting low-class servants and prostitutes pregnant, his cynical association with a society maven a la Les Liasons Dangereuses which resulted in his catastrophic marriage to an innocent, upright, and deeply religious young woman, his affair with his sister, and (when social outrage threatened to make things uncomfortable for him) his eventual flight from England, leaving his sister and their infant daughter to bear the stigma and to withstand the scorn of society alone.

Eisler mixes this tale of profligate erotic dalliance with serious consideration of the literary development of the poet, from his first forays into verse as a boy to his final production of masterpieces such as Don Juan. She also weaves into her story details of the pressing financial problems which faced the impoverished (and irresponsible) young peer and analysis of the effect of Byron's physical problems (a club foot and a life-long tendency to being overweight) on his growth as a man and an artist.

Yet there are also weaknesses in Eisler's work, some of which may merely be the inevitable errors which creep into any lengthy work, but which nevertheless cause the reader some concern as to Eisler's judgement. Let me offer an example which requires a bit of background information: a) when writing letters it was common, in the early 19th century, to abbreviated words; b) Byron's ancestral home was Newstead Abbey; c) Byron liked, for reasons unclear, to call his girlfriends 'Antelope.' What should we then understand when Lady Caroline Lamb, one of Byron's lovers, writes: "you give us both up no ties can bind but Newstead A bears your unkindness in sullen silence"? While you, dear reader, might assume the word starting with A that Caroline abbreviated was "Abbey," Eisler thinks otherwise, filling in "Antelope" (albeit with a question mark indicating uncertainty). Try reading the sentence again and see which interpretation makes more sense.

There are other similar little slips scattered throughout the volume--not so many as to seriously damage the work, but enough to make the reader wonder about the care with which the manuscript was prepared. Other aspects of the book, too, leave room for improvement. Why, for instance, is a holograph letter reproduced at the end of the book but never (as far as I can tell) referred to in the text? Why is there no map to assist the reader in following Byron on his complicated travels throughout Europe and the East? Why do we learn so little about the Gothic movement by which Byron, evidently, was influenced? And could we not hear more of the reception of Byron's poems by his contemporaries?

These problems, however, are small in the grand scheme of things. Overall, through Eisler's work we can appreciate many different sides of Byron and of the fascination that he exercised on so many of those who met him. Perhaps the most flattering thing I can say about Eisler's work is that I found it compelling right to the end, and it has certainly inspired me to read more of Byron's verse.

Sadly, the recent biographic trend on Byron has been to concentrate more on his sexuality than on the fullness of his life. This follows that trend slavishly, it reaches for sensationalism and fails to reveal the poet. It is a glossy superficial biography that appears thinly researched and accepting of much rumor as fact.

Serious students of Byron should avoid and seek out the much more balanced and accurate Marchand biography.

A delightfully readable book. Ms. Eisler writes well and researches well, though a reader might not always grant the objectivity of her sources. I did not, however, as did some of the other reviewers,find her unfair to Byron. It is true that Eisler accepts the fact that Byron was bisexual and thus comes a long way from Leslie Marchand's two-volume biography. She does, nonetheless, fill in gaps left by Marchand, and she treats Annabella Milbanke Byron more generously than have others, but she never loses sympathy with Byron nor causes us to do so, despite his faults. The one problem I had with the biography was her unfairness to Shelley. In all his interactions with Byron, Shelley is made to seem an ungrateful and duplicitous friend. Yet, with just one exception, none of the evidence Eisler presented in these instances would convince this reader. Each interaction was open to interpretation. She always faulted Shelley. I saw these events differently. Eisler was much more on target when she made similar charges about Leigh Hunt. However, the treatment of Shelley aside, I found the book first rate, a happy combination of biography and discussion of poetry.

With every new biography of Byron the previous writer's conjecture becomes the new writer's fact and a starting point for yet more conjecture. Pretty soon Byron will come full circle from the homosexual pedophile / rapist portrayed here, to the rakish romantic poet he was. Ms. Eisler's work is a well-written tome with plenty of detail and the effective tack of incorporating more of the man's poetry into a bio than any previous author. But it lacks a sense of mood; of time and place in the Regency era (Beau Brummell is mentioned once) and has a number of troubling conclusions as well. Perhaps most disturbing is her use of Caroline Lamb's and others testimony to portray Byron as having raped his wife, Annabella while she was pregnant (preposterous conclusion) and seduced his page, Robert Rushton. A jealous and jilted lover out to destroy Byron's reputation does not a good witness make. There is no solid evidence that Byron ever had homosexual affairs. There are facetious remarks in his letters about "culling Hyacinth's" in the East, but since when does a flower ever refer to anything but a young woman? The homosexual inferences are drawn from admitted homosexual, Charles Matthews in his reply. Byron obviously felt attached to John Edleston, the Cambridge choir boy, but staunchly denied theirs was anything but a "passionate, though pure" attachment. Nevertheless, this and other shaky evidence has been used by one biographer after another since Marchand's great work. I suppose this is the "new" information that the public hears about every two years. Other flaws are less subjective. Here are but a few: Fletcher, Byron's lifelong and faithful valet, is called an "older brother" figure. He was 6 years younger than Byron. Hazard, the ancestor of craps, is called a "card game"; An unforgivable sin for a Regency scholar that must have Georgette Heyer spinning in her tomb. No mention is made of his meeting with the Prince Regent, where they discussed their mutual admiration for Walter Scott. Alas, Ms. Eisler looks so knowing and satisfied in her picture on the jacket. Certainly, Byron was no saint, nor did he pretend to be, but I can't help thinking, wherever he is, he is none too pleased with all this.

Another book about Byron, I thought when I saw this. Hmm. Have their been new discoveries? Does the author have new interpretations? No, I realized as I read this book. Despite all the juicy details of Byron's erotic adventures, this book is the dullest volume I've picked up in some time. It's the details. They weigh the story down, and it wasn't clear to me why the author thought this book needed to be written at all. She certainly included everything she researched but nothing is new and nothing is fresh in the telling. Byron comes off as despicable and self-absorbed, which is probably ok--no doubt he was horrid--but the author also makes him sound boring, which I bet he wasn't.

The man who gave our language the essential term "Byronic" was as keen a student of publicity as the most contemporary of authors. In fact, he still holds the record for selling more copies of a book in one day than any other poet: 10,000.

Lord Byron could work the press and influential audiences because he was always conscious of the interconnections between his image and his writing. Dualities came naturally though painfully to him, as we learn in Benita Eisler's lusciously detailed, triumphantly evocative new biography which reveals him in all his deeply flawed glory.

A beautiful, charismatic man, Byron felt his clubfoot was a mark of Cain, but his lameness disappeared in the water where he was a swimmer famed for his prowess, and happy to brag about it. Sometimes quite shy in society (and a dud as a Member of Parliament), he could also be a coruscating speaker who not only won hearts and admiration, but ignited fierce passions and deep envy.

When Byron gained someone's love, he often seemed eager to move on and could often seem heartless; cynicism came easily to one of England's greatest satiric poets. But perhaps the most significant duality in his life was sexual, which played out most intensely on his post-Cambridge Grand Tour in the Balkans where he reveled in partners of both sexes. There, he was also inspired to later aid Greece's independence from Turkey, and he died in the effort.

It would have been easy to write about Byron's personality and lose the focus on his work: he was after all amazingly bawdy, moody, paranoid, witty, free-thinking, mawkish, puritanical, loving, cruel. His life was wracked with dramatic scandal, most notably the dangerous liaison with his married half-sister Augusta, which continued after his marriage, likewise a disaster. Fleeing England and disgrace, he always looked back to it for verification of his success, but became a greater and more dedicated poet in exile.

Even if you're not familiar with the range of Byron's poetry beyond "She Walks in Beauty," this meticulous, entertaining and vivid biography will inspire you to read many of the quotations aloud and seek out the full texts. So Byron's poems--especially his comic masterpiece "Don Juan"--live here as richly as do the varied voices of his amazingly vivid and justly famous letters.

Lev Raphael, author of LITTLE MISS EVIL, the 4th Nick Hoffman mystery.

The biography of Byron by B. Eisler is thoroughly researched, beautifully written, and will become, I do believe, the definitive biography for years to come. The reader can follow almost a day to day life of this most modern of poets, womanizer, blackguard and traveler; but one is always held in thralled at the scope of his poetry, and the tragedy of his short life. Bravo Ms. Eisler.

Even if you aren't extremely familiar with Byron's works, this book will grab and keep your interest as an absorbing book of history, society and morals. The text flows easily, and the narrative line is never compromised. Eisler has written a book that will last through the ages. I really loved it, and am happy to reccomend it.