An iconoclastic exploration of the life of Lord Byron, viewed through the prism of the lives of nine women with whom he was intimately associated.

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 sodomized 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.

 

Alexander Larman is a historian and journalist. He is the author of Blazing Star (2014), the life of Lord Rochester, and writes for the Observer, the Telegraph and the Guardian, as well as the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement.

 

“Normally I don't like modish reassessments of literary legends... however, Byron's Women is different. It isn't a tiresome feminist rant ... it is humane and brooks no balderdash. This radical questioning of the conventional swashbuckling Byronic stance is convincing”-- The Times.