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Byron was—to echo Wordsworth—half-perceived and half-created. He would have affirmed Jean Baudrillard’s observation that “to seduce is to die to reality and reconstitute oneself as illusion.” But among the readers he seduced, in person and in poetry, were women possessed of vivid imaginations who collaborated with him in fashioning his legend. Accused of “treating women harshly,” Byron acknowledged: “It may be so—but I have been their martyr. My whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them.” Those whom he spell bound often returned the favor in their own writings tried to remake his public image to reflect their own.

Through writings both well known and generally unknown, James Soderholm examines the poet’s relationship with five women: Elizabeth Pigot, Caroline Lamb, Annabella Milbanke, Teresa Guiccioli, and Marguerite Blessington. These women participated in Byron’s life and literary career and the manipulation of images that is the Byron legend.

Soderholm argues against the sentimental depictions of biographers who would preserve Byron’s romantic aura by diminishing the contributions of these women to his social, sexual, and literary identity. By restoring the contexts in which literary works charm or bedevil particular readers, the author shows the consequences of Byron’s poetic seductions during and after his life.

James Soderholm is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

"Soderholm is a nimblefooted writer whose characterizations have punch. . . . [He] has taken the extra time and effort to give us this economical, well-researched, clever, and convincing study of Byron's serious relationships with literate and literary women."—European Romantic Review

"Soderholm has taken the extra time and effort to give us this economical, well-researched, clever, and convincing study of Byron's serious relationships with literate and literary women."—European Romantic Review

"A study that will clearly make a solid contribution to biographical theory, Byron scholarship, and scholarship on the women writers related to him."—Rocky Mountain Review

"A delightful book: lucidly written, eloquently expressed, and scholarly without being in the least instance turgid or pretentious. . . . An exemplary book that ushers in a fresh and invigorating critical approach to Byron."—Byron Journal

Publication Date

1995

Publisher

The University Press of Kentucky

Place of Publication

Lexington, KY

ISBN

9780813119397

eISBN

9780813158952

Keywords

Lord Byron, George Gordon Lord Byron, Women and literature, English poets

Disciplines

Literature in English, British Isles

Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend
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