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Byron's Women

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Byron's Women

By: Alexander Larman
Narrated by: Kris Dyer
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About this listen

One was the mother who bore him; three were women who adored him; one was the sister he slept with; one was his abused and sodomised wife; one was his legitimate daughter; one was the fruit of his incest; another was his friend Shelley's wife, who avoided his bed and invented science fiction instead.

Nine women; one poet named George Gordon, Lord Byron - mad, bad and very, very dangerous to know. The most flamboyant of the Romantics, he wrote literary best sellers; he was a satirist of genius; he embodied the Romantic love of liberty (the Greeks revere him as a national hero); he was the prototype of the modern celebrity - and he treated women (and these women in particular) abominably.

In Byron's Women, Alex Larman tells their extraordinary, moving and often shocking stories. In so doing, he creates a scurrilous anti-biography of one of England's greatest poets, whose life he views - to deeply unflattering effect - through the prism of the nine damaged women's lives.

©2016 Alexander Larman (P)2016 Audible, Ltd Art & Literature Authors Historical Funny England Marriage

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I really enjoyed listening about these women’s lives. They were interesting individuals but, taken as a collective, they showed the breadth of women’s experiences during this time - with the exception of someone happily married! You don’t need to know (or care that much) about Byron to enjoy this. The author strikes a nice balance of Woman v Byron content. He is the thread, and the reason we have so many documents, but he’s not the focus.
This book is sectioned by woman+date and the writing style is such that you could read each section independently. Occasionally when an event or letter, etc is re-referenced in a different section sounds like it’s new info when it’s not - don’t let that confuse you!

Very interesting

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The narrator should check up on the punctuation of some words. It took me a second to think about how he saw the text...totally off of some of the words, one being one of Byron's most famous works.

Don Juan?!?!

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An extremely well written and researched book. Liked the use of evidence based argument.

Review

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The book is always going to be about the man himself no matter how many women you put in it. Maybe not a little so because they turn out to be not unlike him? I was about to throw out all his work, sick and tired of his libertine, dipsomaniacal depressive state damaging to women, especially his poor daughters, but then his wife more or less topped his behaviour with regards to her own kind and I forgave him as much as his daughters do.

Examining the lives of paramours and daughters we find much repetition. This work mainly emphasises the pressures of the shame of scandal - as determined by society - which causes horrific forms of cruel exile and neglect, and how even Byron was susceptible to this. It leaves one with notions of oppression and all romanticism dispelled. A highly informative read which, for me, took Byron off his pedestal only to find him right back on it at the very end.

Exhausting!

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Well researched, in-depth and honest, its odd how you can hate Byron for what he did and yet still admire what he was, but it even more so admire the women who, on the whole, survived him. I real insight into the complex nature of Byron by looking at those he touched...as it were.

Brilliant

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My knowledge of Byron was sketchy at best prior to listening to this excellent volume. It is a portrait of Byron through his turbulent relationships with the women in his life. From his incestuous affair with his half sister, to his abusiveness towards his wife, Byron comes across as something of a monster. Very well written, meticulously researched, and equally well narrated.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know.

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Eh. Not a terrible book, except the writer keeps discribing everyone as "disingenuous" every ten minutes. I'm thinking of turning it into a drinking game.

Disingenuous

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