New books

The Vampyre Family: Passion, Envy and the Curse of Byron by Andrew McConnell Stott Published 1 January 2013

Andrew McConnell Stott's latest book examines how the lives of Romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley and their close associates Mary Godwin Shelley, her step-sister Claire Clairmont and Byron's doctor, John Polidori, intertwined during that famous summer of 1816 that they spent on the shore of Lake Geneva. Quoting the inside cover blurb:

It was a period of extraordinary creativity from which would emerge Frankenstein, the gothic masterpiece of Romantic fiction, Byron's Childe Harold, Shelley's Mont Blanc, and John Polidori's The Vampyre, the first great vampire novel...It was also a time of remarkable drama and emotional turmoil. For Byron and the Shelleys, their stay by the lake would serve to immortalise them in the annals of literary history. But for Clair and Polidori, the Swiss sojourn would scar them forever.

Professor Stott's book is the first major publication to incorporate the facts now known about Claire's birth; her true parents, Mary Jane Vial and Sir John Lethbridge; and Mary Jane Vial's own parentage and early life. An endnote to the book references the material on this website. I am of course very grateful for Professor Stott's kind acknowledgement of the relevance of the material to his research.

Reference: Stott, Andrew McConnell, The Vampyre Family: Passion, Envy and the Curse of Byron (Edinburgh, Canongate Books, 2013)

Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives by Daisy Hay Published 24 June 2011

From the Amazon website:

"In Young Romantics Daisy Hay shatters the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, telling the story of the communal existence of an astonishingly youthful circle. The fiery, generous spirit of Leigh Hunt, radical journalist and editor of The Examiner, took centre stage. He bound together the restless Shelley and his brilliant wife Mary, author of Frankenstein; Mary's feisty step-sister Claire Clairmont, who became Byron's lover and the mother of his child; and Hunt's charismatic sister-in-law Elizabeth Kent. With authority, sparkling prose and constant insight Daisy Hay describes their travels in France, Switzerland and Italy, their artistic triumphs, their headstrong ways, their grievous losses and their devastating tragedies.

Young Romantics explores the history of the group, from its inception in Leigh Hunt's prison cell in 1813 to its ultimate disintegration in the years following 1822. It encompasses tales of love, betrayal, sacrifice and friendship, all of which were played out against a background of political turbulence and intense literary creativity. This smouldering turmoil of strained relationships and insular friendships would ferment to inspire the drama of Frankenstein, the heady idealism of Shelley's poetry, and Byron's own self-loathing, self-loving public persona.

Above all the characters are rendered on the page with marvellous vitality, and this is a gloriously entrancing and revelatory read, the debut of a young biographer of the highest calibre and enormous promise."

Reference: Hay, Daisy, Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (Bloomsbury Pb; 1st edition, 2011)