The only biography I've read about Byron, so I can't make comparisons. For my own purposes, it was thoroughly enjoyable and readable. The research seemed excellent. MacCarthy's access to John Murray, Publisher's correspondence with Byron appears to have resulted in some fresh light on the man.
The chapters that concern his decisive change of purpose in life, viz. his commitment to support for an independent Greece, and his putting his money and resources to doing so, reveal a thorough determination that his life would not solely be remembered for profligacy and scandal. His dismal death at age thirty-seven, in swampy Missolonghi is as sad now as it was then for his followers.
And what a fantastic swimmer he was!!! (especially given he wore a kind of pantaloons when he did so).

Reread, 3/19. Doesn't really feel like a definitive biography of Byron, but I suppose it must do for now. There's been so much written about him, but there always seems to be something left to say. (Do I buy into MacCarthy's contention--which seems to be how she intends to set her biography apart--that B was predominantly homosexual? Not really. He seems to me to have been manifestly and enthusiastically bisexual. Which isn't to say that there wasn't an unhappy, driven quality to his "voracious sexuality.") Was he bipolar, as others have postulated? MacCarthy subtly suggests it without finally committing to a diagnosis. Not a critical biography--she pays only passing, though appreciative, attention to the poetry.

Each time I've read about him over the 40+ years I've been doing it, my responses vary. This time, his self-destructiveness and the "craving void" have especially disturbed me. I'm relieved to have reached the end. Reread his chapter in Touched with Fire as a kind of antidote to this. "But let me change this theme which grows too sad." ( )

Poor Byron! How did she manage to make his life look boring? And to bury so deep his politics? Quite a feat! ( )

This is an excellent, excellent biography - probably the best I've read on Byron to date. McCarthy manages the task which all too often seems to defeat biographers: balancing a sympathetic analysis of Byron's character with an objectivity which allows her to deal with the less engaging, often contradictory, sides of Byron's character.

There is also a sense of freshness about the work, in part because McCarthy has been afforded access to the Murray Archive (the archives of John Murray II, the publisher of most of Byron's works), and has used some papers which have never before come to public attention. The research which the author must have done both in this archive, and in other sources, shines through clearly in the text - it's always erudite, but never pedantic.

I particularly liked how McCarthy helped to place Byron in a wider literary and cultural context, both amongst his contemporaries and amongst later authors. The links and influences to such things as the Brontë sisters' Angria juvenilia was interesting, especially since I'd never really considered them in that light before.

I do have some slight nitpicks about the book. Although this is a biography and attention is, quite rightly, focused on Byron's life, I did feel as if McCarthy ignored any real attempts at analysis of the poems themselves. There were some quotations, but they felt annoyingly brief. I also felt as if she glossed over the circumstances that surrounded some of Byronmania - she catalogues some of Byron's more intense fans, yes (Caroline Lamb always horrifies me), but I found it hard to get a sense of the Byron-as-public-figure that inspired this mass hysteria.

There was also, I thought, the slightest of lapses of consistency of logic in analysing whether Byron was the father of an illegitimate child by a maid-servant of his in his youth, and whether he was the father of Elizabeth Medora by his half-sister Augusta.

Despite all this, however, this is still a very well-written book, and the one biography that I would recommend above all others for someone looking to be introduced to the life of Lord Byron ( )

recommendation removed due to lack of citation/ plagerism of original sources- ie Murray and Hobhouse journals used verbaitum