Byron’s Women explores the lives of nine women significant to poet and lothario Lord Byron. Included are his half-sister and lover, Augusta Leigh; his mistress, Caroline Lamb; his friend and writer of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley; his mother; his wife, Annabella Milbanke; and his daughter, Ada Lovelace, pioneer in computer science. Larman explores not only each woman’s relationship with Byron but her ambitions, achievements and passions. Larman also sheds light upon Byron’s violent nature.
While his womanising has long been romanticised (he is seen as a libertine and fun-loving), passages about his relationships with his lover Claire Clairmont and Annabella show his volatility and abusive tendencies. This is no ordinary biography; through exploring the lives of the women in his life and the impressions he left upon them, we are offered an outline of Byron’s person, arguably more accurate, compelling and candid than any portrait focused on him and his poetry could be.
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