The Shadows of Elisa Lynch

by Siân Rees

In 1854, an ambitious Irish courtesan met a South American General in Paris and returned with him to Paraguay. When he became President, she became his de facto first lady and together they changed the course of the country's history. Consumed by desire for Napoleonic glory, General President Lopez took Paraguay into a disastrous war against her neighbours. Elisa Lynch went with him on campaign, turning conditions of war to her advantage where she could. He was killed in the northern hills but she survived, only to be expelled from Paraguay and die an obscure death in Paris. Reviled and respected, loved and distrusted, Elisa Lynch has been described as both a heroic companion to Lopez and a malign enchantress. In "The Shadows of Elisa Lynch", Sian Rees tells her fascinating story of recovered history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ireland, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Siân Rees is a British author and historian. She has a degree in history from University of Oxford. She lives in Brighton and is an RLF Fellow at the University of Sussex. She is particularly interested in the social and maritime history of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Reviews

[zed · Rating 4 out of 5]

The War Of The Triple Alliance is an area of South American history that has received not as much attention in the English-speaking world as it should have. I would say that this book alone would not make up for that, but nonetheless the story of the life of an Irish courtesan who married Paraguayan dictator Lopez is a very interesting read. For those that know nothing of the War Of The Triple Alliance, check out its wiki. Wiki is not my usual source to suggest, but it will give a good overview of this horrendous war and the ramifications to the combatants.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Since writing this review I remembered one point of great interest which I had forgotten to mention - that in the literature of the time Elisa Lynch was always referred to her as an Englishwoman, not because her Irish birth was not known but because it was irrelevant. Everyone in the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland was considered 'English' unless they were 'folkloric' peasants such as Scottish 'Gillies' or problematic troublemakers like 'Irish' Fenians in which case their 'Celtic' tag was gleefully applied. I point this out because there have been attempts to retrospectively 'create' a 'British' identity in the 19th century. This is totally bogus and without foundation for the 19th century and even, well into the 20th. If 'British' was used it was not to include but to mark someone out as 'different' because they could not comfortably be described as 'English'. British was a term of exclusion and difference not of inclusion.)

Elisa Lynch has, in recent years, attracted a number of English biographers, almost all of them tawdry, based on almost no archival research and certainly no reading of the extensive Spanish literature of the period. Even English authors like Eric Hobsbawm or well translated Spanish language authors like Eduardo Galeano are invariable ignored as are all academic publications in English or any other language. Sian Rees book is no different in its shoddy and superficial research (at least from the evidence of her footnotes and bibliography) though at least she does not follow the trope of sexual promiscuous/omniverous women (in most biographies they could be using the word succubus) ensnaring and subduing to her will a powerful man. The story as told here is so redolent of racist and misogynistic clichés that it makes one want to throw this 'biography' across the room and stamp on it.

There is a story to be told about Lopez, Elisa Lynch and the war against Paraguay but this is not it. It is superficial, badly researched and does nothing but reinforce the simplistic narrative which looks upon the horrors of a barbarous war against an to independent small country by its larger neighbors (possibly backed by financial interests, in this period the City of London, annoyed with a country unwilling to take external debt) to an 'exotic' tale of funny foreigners. Lynch was not the 'siren' of Paraguay enticing and trapping a foolish man into acts of war. Her role in any of the events was probably extremely minor, except as an instrument of Lopez in trying to change, reform and modernize his country and maybe tackle the influence of his siblings and mother.

This is not a totally appalling biography, in some ways it is not a biography at all and Elisa Lynch disappears so completely that on can't help thinking that Sian Rees lost interest in her and the whole project. It does give more weight to the war of the Triple Alliance then other Lynch 'biographies' but in such a shoddy way as to leave the reader more confused then enlightened. Although not as bad as many of the truly atrocious biographies out there about Elisa Lynch it is not very good and is more likely to bore then entertain.

[Harriet · Rating 2 out of 5]

An intriguing premise but I suspect that the research materials did not yield the story that the title suggests. Elisa Lynch remains a shadowy figure, and not a very sympathetic one. It covers an extremely bloody and complicated period of South American history and does an good job of narrating the ins and outs of a disasterous war. In the aftermath, Elisa's meglomaniac lover carried out an appalling series of reprisals and this part of the book is not for the faint hearted. I did not feel that sense of getting under the skin of this period, why people were driven to behave in this way, nor that fantastic tingle you get when a really talented historian deconstructs the clockwork of events and shows you what really was going on. I enjoyed Sian Rees The Floating Brother more -possibly this was because she had more to go on to support her premise.

[Velvetink · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far the most uninspiring book I've read all year... reads like a dry history book, and is more about War in Paraguay than about about the woman Eliza Lynch. Not sure I will finish this one in a hurry...

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/919332.html[return][return]I picked this up very cheaply remaindered in Belfast, basically because the only thing I knew about Paraguay was that after fighting a disastrous war with its neighbours in the middle of the nineteenth century, the country had become so depopulated of men that polygamy was made legal. (I'm not actually sure if this is true, but it seems to be in the lore anyway.)[return][return]This book explains how Paraguay got into such a mess, by examining the career of Eliza Lynch, probably Irish, who picked up the son and heir of the Paraguayan president in Paris in 1853 (he was 27; she may have been 18), returned with him to Asunci

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemed to focus more on the establishment and development of Paraguay. I realise that it's necessary to set the scene but I picked up this book to learn more about Elisa Lynch. It was okay I guess, if a little snoozesome.