![]() ![]() In her new short biography of the poet, the Irish fiction writer Edna O’Brien has chosen to disregard Byron’s verse almost entirely and instead spotlight the romances only, a decision that is hard to defend, for without the poetry, Byron would have been just another solipsistic sex addict. Charlie Chaplin was the first face recognized around the globe, and Charles Lindbergh was the first media celebrity, but Lord Byron (1788–1824) was the first to sing shamelessly of himself from across oceans and continents. Few lives have been as legend-ready as Lord Byron’s, few writers as able to cultivate a legend commanding enough to boom down through the centuries. Lord Byron’s tireless love of women, men, teenagers, prostitutes, his own sister, the wives of others and their 11-year-old daughters-all of them chronicled in the most famous poetry of the 19th century-helped forge a legend that has parallel only in the debauched exploits of Casanova and Sade. ![]() Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life, by Edna O’Brien, W. ![]()
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