" Byron was -- to echo Wordsworth -- half-perceived and
half-created. He would have affirmed Jean Baudrillard's observation
that "to seduce is to die to reality and reconstitute oneself as
illusion." But among the readers he seduced, in person and in
poetry, were women possessed of vivid imaginations who collaborated
with him in fashioning his legend. Accused of "treating women
harshly," Byron acknowledged: "It may be so -- but I have been
their martyr. My whole life has been sacrificed to them and by
them." Those whom he spell bound often returned the favor in their
own writings tried to remake his public image to reflect their own.
Through writings both well known and generally unknown, James
Soderholm examines the poet's relationship with five women:
Elizabeth Pigot, Caroline Lamb, Annabella Milbanke, Teresa
Guiccioli, and Marguerite Blessington. These women participated in
Byron's life and literary career and the manipulation of images
that is the Byron legend. Soderholm argues against the sentimental
depictions of biographers who would preserve Byron's romantic aura
by diminishing the contributions of these women to his social,
sexual, and literary identity. By restoring the contexts in which
literary works charm or bedevil particular readers, the author
shows the consequences of Byron's poetic seductions during and
after his life.
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