Here is the first biography of Thomas Medwin--literary
adventurer, rascal, scholar, confidence man, successful fortune
hunter, and bemused speculator on a grand scale in old Italian oil
paintings. Poet, novelist, translator of Aeschylus, cousin and
boyhood friend of the poet Shelley, he was a man of fiery temper,
fierce hatreds, and enduring loves.
Although an intimate friend of Lord Byron, he was so dangerous
(or disreputable) that his Lordship warned Teresa Guiccioli, his
last mistress, not to be alone in Medwin's company. Later, Medwin
introduced Byron's daughter to her future husband, Lord Lovelace,
and so determined the poet's line of descent.
Friend of Washington Irving, gentleman of the old school,
neglected Boswell of the nineteenth century, Medwin reported the
conversations of Byron, Shelley, Trelawny, Hazlitt, Canova the
sculptor, and others. His life and adventures light up little-known
aspects of the nineteenth-century literary, military, social, and
publishing world--in England, India, Italy, France, Switzerland,
and Germany.
Medwin served as midwife to the words of a dead man--Lord
Byron--who returned to laugh and sneer at the living from the
Captain's pages. The Conversations of Lord Byron thus became the
most controversial book of the day, going through a dozen editions,
in six countries, and being translated into French, German, and
Italian. It aroused the wrath, indignation, or enthusiastic
interest of such individuals as Goethe, Lady Byron, Lady Caroline
Lamb, the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, John Cam Hobhouse (later Lord
Broughton), Sir Walter Scott, John Murray, and Washington Irving.
Medwin, whose long and adventurous life extended from the rise and
flowering of the Romantic Period to the mid-Victorian Age (which he
regarded as a dreary decline from the great heights of his youth),
was an influence of the first magnitude in determining the early
public image of Byron and the reputation of Shelley.
This often amusing story, as engrossing as a novel, is drawn
from all the available accounts, including many important sources
never before published. In effect a new contribution to the
biographical study of Byron and Shelley, it clarifies Medwin's
relations not only with these two poets but also with many other
important and interesting figures of the day.
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