THE MEMOIRS OF LORD BYRON by Robert Nye

Even before Byron was decently buried, lawyers representing his wife and sister saw to it that the manuscript of the poet's Memoirs was first torn up and then burned. Why? Could it have been because the book contained revelations of his incestuous love for his sister Augusta? Or details of those 'unnatural' practices hinted at by his wife Annabella and his mistress, Lady Caroline Lamb? Did Byron ever own up to homosexuality (a hanging offence in his day)? Whatever the contents of that lost book, it shocked to the core those few who were privileged to read it. One of those few, Hobhouse, Byron's executor as well as his friend, wrote in his private journal at the time of the burning: 'The whole Memoirs were fit only for a brothel and would damn Lord B to everlasting infamy if published'.

Even without those memoirs, Byron's reputation falls far short of the saintly. He is regarded in death as he was in life - as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. In this extraordinary fictional biography, Robert Nye assumes the persona of the club-footed Casanova, the boxing, boating, breast-stroking Euro-banished bard, and tells all...

Soft cover, good condition.