Byron in Love (W W NORTON & CO)

Acclaimed biographer of James Joyce, Edna O Brien has written a jaunty (The New Yorker) biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic pleasures of Greece and Turkey, culminating in his meteoric rise to fame at the age of twenty-four. With a novelist s understanding of tempo and characterization (Miami Herald), O Brien captures the spirit of the man and creates an indelible portrait that explodes the Romantic myth. Byron, as brilliantly rendered żeby O Brien, is the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, and defiantly immortal."