Seãn Manchester

The Life of Lady Caroline Lamb by Seán Manchester . Illustrated Hbk Edition . Price £21 . ISBN 1 872486 00 2

Caroline, an exuberantly free spirit, threw aside all discretion and delighted in shocking her aristocratic friends. She did not mind absurdity, but Byron, her lover, did. He cooled towards her and she became desperate. Her wayward disregard for convention grew worse and then the poet rejected her that pushed her to the brink of madness. The infamous epithet “mad, bad and dangerous to know” ~ fateful words that flowed from Caroline’s pen in the wake of her first encounter with the poet who would always possess her heart ~ became a description more appropriate to Caroline whose attempts to rehabilitate herself in society were bizarre and ruinous. In this fascinating biography, written by a blood descendant of Lord Byron, the author reveals a gothic world or romance that has long since disappeared. A time of great eloquence, breathtaking beauty and burning passion! The Romantic Age was at its crescendo when Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron occupied the centre of the stage and Seán Manchester’s biography brings illumination to the dark aura surrounding a life that, together with the poet’s, dazzled and dismayed high society two centuries ago. In the book’s epilogue, the author investigates Caroline’s unquiet spirit at Brocket Hall and at the Lamb Family Vault in Hatfield. He also recounts his pilgrimage to Byron’s tomb at Hucknall Torkard. He writes: “They seem restless in our midst; their unearthly presence can be felt. They haunt us still …“ Earlier in this remarkable biography, the author recounts how his own grandmother was literally frightened to death by one of the many sinister spectres that haunt Newstead Abbey Park where his grandparents then resided. Praised by The Byron Journal, and the late Professor Devendra P Varma, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know is a most welcome addition to the annals of Gothic Romanticism. As Varma himself stated: “I feel that Seán Manchester is the only scholar who can write a revealing book on such a personality as Lady Caroline Lamb.”