Lady Byron and Her Daughters

by Julia Markus

Overview

A startling reevaluation of Lady Byron’s marriage and the untold story of her complex life as single mother and progressive force.

The center of public attention after her tumultuous marriage to Lord Byron, Annabella Milbanke transformed herself from a neglected wife into a figure of incredible resilience and social vision. After she and her infant child were cast out of their home, she was left to navigate the stifling and unsupportive social environment of Regency England. Far from a victim or an obstacle to Byron’s work, however, Lady Byron was a rebel against the fashionable snobbery of her class, founding the first Infants School and Co-Operative School in England. A poet and talented mathematician, Lady Byron supported the education of her precocious daughter, Ada Lovelace, now recognized and lauded as a pioneer of computer science, and saved from death her “adoptive daughter” Medora Leigh, the child of Lord Byron’s incest with his sister. Lady Byron was adored by the younger abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe and by many notable friends. Yet her complex relationships with her family, including the sister Byron loved, runs like a live wire through this skillfully told and groundbreaking biography of a remarkable woman who made a life for herself and became a leading light in her century.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393082685
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/13/2015
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Julia Markus, the author of three acclaimed biographies, is the director of creative writing and a professor of English at Hofstra University. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Lady Byron and Her Daughters…offers an important corrective to the notion that Annabella was, in Markus's words, "the demented and dull-witted demon" depicted by 20th-century critics. Here Annabella is not merely an unsatisfactory bit player in Byron's glamorous tragedy but a person in her own right, a woman of intelligence and imagination who made something of her life in the most difficult of circumstances. The result is feminist biography in the best sense, a recalibration of literary history through which silenced female voices are heard. Markus is a skilled and sure-footed storyteller who sketches in the complications of Byron's biography with speed and assurance, letting the details of Annabella's lesser-known afterlife as a philanthropist and single parent take center stage.

The New York Times Book Review - Daisy Hay

08/10/2015
Novelist and biographer Markus (Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning) offers a spirited, scholarly defense of Lord Byron’s onetime wife, Annabella. Countering the condescending or insulting depictions of Lady Byron by her ex-husband’s biographers, this capacious account reveals a woman of “prodigious philanthropy” who founded England’s first infant school (for children between the ages of four and seven) and the Ealing School of Art, and espoused progressive ideas such as penal reform and the abolition of slavery. The book stretches from the lax morality of the Regency to the constraints of the Victorian era, and boasts an immense cast of characters. The family included Byron and Annabella’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, recognized today as the first computer programmer; Byron’s half-sister, Augusta, and her daughter, Medora (whom Byron may have fathered); and Claire Clairmont, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s stepsister and the mother of Byron’s daughter Allegra. Lady Byron’s wider milieu was populated by a Who’s Who of the period, including computer pioneer Charles Babbage and a heap of writers, among them Walter Scott, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. With this formidable biography, Markus restores a “misunderstood yet difficult woman of genius” from generations of derision and neglect. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"A genuine contribution to Byron studies… Markus brings perspective to Lady Byron’s scandalous marriage, to her relationship with daughter Ada, computer science pioneer, to luminaries such as Charles Babbage, Walter Scott, Queen Victoria, as well as to escaped American slaves… A refreshing portrait of a talented human being complete with her accomplishments and disappointments."

Arnold Anthony Schmidt

"No one tells a story like Julia Markus… A joy to read and often hilariously funny, the book brilliantly braids together literature, history, and psychology."

Patricia Cronin

"Cheers to Julia Markus for rescuing Lady Byron from two centuries of ignominy. She portrays her fascinating cast of characters and their era with style and verve."

Alix Kates Shulman

"It is Julia Markus’s peculiar gift to rescue great ‘lesser lives’ of the English Romantic period from undeserved oblivion… To the delight of her devoted readership, Markus has done it again…the book is a treat from start to finish."

Vivian Gornick

"Julia Markus paints a fascinating portrait of a woman who lived an enormously useful life—rich in detail, brilliantly researched, witty, and insightful."

Miriam Levine

"What a lively and captivating story! Julia Markus’s reappraisal of Byron’s much-maligned wife shows a talented, generous woman who played a vital role in the life of her times."

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

"Markus is a skilled and sure-footed storyteller who sketches in the complications of Byron’s biography with speed and assurance."

New York Times Book Review

"I feel as if I’m getting acquainted with Lady Byron for the first time. Julia Markus’s interpretation is engaging, accessible, and compassionate."

Peter Graham

09/01/2015
Much more than a standard biography, this is a fascinating and engrossing morality tale about the hardships borne by women in historical periods. Markus (English, Hofstra Univ.; Dared and Done) tells the story of Annabella Milbanke (1792–1860) and her short-lived, abusive, and highly dysfunctional marriage to Romantic poet Lord Byron. This is a feminist defense of Lady Byron, a woman who sought escape from her failed marriage and claimed custody of her daughter at a time when married women had no legal rights. Complex and yet vulnerable, the spurned Annabella considered herself a failure of a wife and supported the education of her daughter Ada Lovelace (a pioneering computer scientist) and championed progressive causes such as education, agricultural reform, and abolition. Markus juxtaposes these achievements against the media frenzy, myths, and lies that contemporaries used to defend Byron, presenting him as a flawed individual whose incestuous relationship with his married half-sister produced another daughter whom Annabella had a hand in raising. For historians, the most significant piece of this tangled story is the role played by author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, who penned a vindication of Lady Byron's life, leading 19th-century American feminists to make marriage and divorce part of their reform agenda. VERDICT While stilted writing and complex literary allusions may weaken the appeal of this narrative for general readers, it is recommended for fans of biography, history, literature, and women's studies.—Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Library Journal

2015-07-08
A lively story of an aggrieved wife fleeing an impulsive Regency romance, which became a massive scandal in 19th-century England. Author of previous Victorian biographies and also novels, Markus (English/Hofstra Univ.; J. Anthony Froude: The Last Undiscovered Great Victorian, 2005, etc.) finds in Lady Byron a protofeminist wife who refused to be humiliated by the famous, pathological philanderer who scorned her after a year of marriage that produced a child, Ada. The author has scoured the archives for evidence of rich nuance to the life of Lady Byron, nee Annabella Milbanke, English aristocrat and only child to a set of middle-age progressives who recognized and cultivated their daughter's precocious mathematical bent. Markus tracks how Annabella was manipulated by her influential aunt, Lady Melbourne, into marriage with the famous, unstable poet Lord Byron, who was actually in love with his half sister, Augusta Leigh. Indeed, the crux of the scandal involved the daughter of Augusta Leigh by Byron, Medora, born shortly before his marriage to Annabella. Soon enough, Annabella discovered the sadistic narcissism of her gloomy new husband, who delighted in crushing her will and playing the two women off each other. Markus wades deeply into the legal measures Annabella took (with her ample means) to separate from her abusive husband when divorce was out of the question and also to protect her daughter, Ada, who became a brilliant disciple of scientific savant Charles Babbage. The author portrays the magnanimity of Annabella in sheltering the abused Medora, caught in the familial trauma of her mother (Medora was raped and became a teenage mother), and shows how Lady Byron's own victimization prompted her philanthropic work, specifically in establishing education opportunities for girls. A literary biographer with a light, mellifluous touch underscores the precarious position of women in 19th-century English society.

Kirkus Reviews