Byron

Co-winner of the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography Notable Book of 1997 -- The New York Times In the decade before he died, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was possibly the most famous and notorious man in Europe. Over forty years have elapsed since the last full-scale biography of one of the greatest and most entertaining poets of any age; Phyllis Grosskurth offers a long overdue reappraisal that draws on significant new material. Byron (1788-1824) was an outsider all his life. Afflicted by a club foot, deprived of a father, oppressed and humiliated by chronic debt, he emerged as a figure of powerful contradictions - his indolence alternating with bouts of manic energy, his generosity with his parsimony, his kindness with cruelty, his love of life with periods of profound depression, and, as shown in his last and most lasting poem, "Don Juan," his romanticism battling with his cynicism. His personal life was equally complicated. Relationships with his half sister Augusta (whom for many years he regarded as the love of his life), Lady Caroline Lamb, Lady Oxford and others were known, but the scandal that arose after his separation from Annabella Milbanke, his wife of only a year, led him to take flight to Europe. His romantic idealism was fostered during his exile, and brought about his final journey to Greece when that country rose up against its Turkish rulers, and a tragically early and unheroic death. "Byron: The Flawed Angel" is a wide-ranging, clear-eyed biography. Grosskurth uses the great poems adroitly and accessibly; she draws on the wealth of Byron's letters and has had access to the Lovelace Papers, which document in detail Byron's disastrous marriage and its aftermath until his death. The result is a compelling portrait of a flamboyant, complex and extraordinary man.