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The Fall of the House of Byron: Scandal and Seduction in Georgian England
In the early eighteenth century, Newstead Abbey was among the most admired aristocratic homes in England. It was the abode of William, 4th Baron Byron - a popular amateur composer and artist - and his teenage wife Frances. But by the end of the century, the building had become a crumbling and ill-cared-for ruin. Surrounded by wreckage of his inheritance, the 4th Baron's dissipated son and heir William, 5th Baron Byron - known to history as the 'Wicked Lord' - lay on his deathbed alongside a handful of remaining servants and amidst a thriving population of crickets.
This was the home that a small, pudgy boy of ten from Aberdeen - who the world would later come to know as Lord Byron, the Romantic poet, soldier, and adventurer - would inherit in 1798. His family, he would come to learn, had in recent decades become known for almost unfathomable levels of scandal and impropriety, from elopement, murder, and kidnapping to adultery, coercion, and thrilling near-death experiences at sea. Just as it had shocked the society of Georgian London, the outlandish and scandalous story of the Byrons - and the myths that began to rise around it - would his influence his life and poetry for posterity.
The Fall of the House of Byron follows the fates of Lord Byron's ancestors over three generations in a drama that begins in rural Nottinghamshire and plays out in the gentlemen's clubs of Georgian London, amid tempests on far-flung seas, and in the glamour of pre-revolutionary France. A compelling story of a prominent and controversial characters, it is a sumptuous family portrait and an electrifying work of social history.
This was the home that a small, pudgy boy of ten from Aberdeen - who the world would later come to know as Lord Byron, the Romantic poet, soldier, and adventurer - would inherit in 1798. His family, he would come to learn, had in recent decades become known for almost unfathomable levels of scandal and impropriety, from elopement, murder, and kidnapping to adultery, coercion, and thrilling near-death experiences at sea. Just as it had shocked the society of Georgian London, the outlandish and scandalous story of the Byrons - and the myths that began to rise around it - would his influence his life and poetry for posterity.
The Fall of the House of Byron follows the fates of Lord Byron's ancestors over three generations in a drama that begins in rural Nottinghamshire and plays out in the gentlemen's clubs of Georgian London, amid tempests on far-flung seas, and in the glamour of pre-revolutionary France. A compelling story of a prominent and controversial characters, it is a sumptuous family portrait and an electrifying work of social history.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 2020
47 people are currently reading
1389 people want to read
About the author
Emily Brand
6 books27 followersEmily is a writer and historian with a special interest in the long eighteenth century, especially English social history and the trials and tribulations of romantic relationships c.1660–1837.
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March 26, 2022A narrative history of the Byron family for a few generations before the poet, depicting how, frankly, godawful they mostly were. It's a litany of wasted time, wasted money, miserable marriages, entitlement, and self indulgence. Foul Weather Jack Byron was about the only one to achieve anything and a chunk of what he achieved included perpetrating a famous atrocity on a civilian town. The rest of them added up to very little. Which does start to feel a bit pointless tbh: once I started wondering why I was reading about these awful no-mark people, it was hard to see past that.
It's got a good period feel and is well set in the time, though I didn't love the rather purple framing passages. Readable, and if I cared about Byron I imagine I'd have been a great deal more engaged.
It's got a good period feel and is well set in the time, though I didn't love the rather purple framing passages. Readable, and if I cared about Byron I imagine I'd have been a great deal more engaged.
January 19, 2020
This is an excellent read about Byron, and his ancestors. It begins with the arrival of George Gordon Byron, as a child, arriving at Newstead Abbey, with his mother. The young Byron has inherited the property, against the odds, and we then learn how this happened and the history of some of his relatives. For, although the most famous Byron was known as, “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know,” he certainly had some competition to be the most scandalous Byron. From, ‘the whore, my Lady Byron,’ mentioned by Samuel Pepys as all too familiar with the bedroom of Charles II, to ‘Foulweather Jack,’ who survived shipwreck and mutiny, this is a story of almost unbelievable scandals, gossip, tragedy and financial incompetence.
Obviously, author Emily Brand makes the suggestion that the branch, as it were, never falls far from the tree. It is all too easy to make this argument, in retrospect. Still, this is an interesting read, with the history of the family well-researched and the links between history, and family, well woven. Very readable and wonderfully scandalous.
Obviously, author Emily Brand makes the suggestion that the branch, as it were, never falls far from the tree. It is all too easy to make this argument, in retrospect. Still, this is an interesting read, with the history of the family well-researched and the links between history, and family, well woven. Very readable and wonderfully scandalous.
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January 9, 2020As modern popular opinion returns to something like its old disapproving view of Lord Byron, a book which situates him in the dynasty of which he was a part (albeit initially a fairly marginal one) and reminds us that compared to his family, he really wasn't that bad. Spendthrift, fuckboy and occasional whiner he might have been, but dear heavens, at least he was interesting about it, whereas plenty of them just read like lazy sketches of dislikeable aristocrats, fit only to serve as antagonists in broad-brush historical dramas. In particular, Byron's predecessor to the title, William, 5th Baron Byron, looms at the heart of this book like an especially disagreeable toad – killing a friend in suspicious circumstances while young, squandering his inheritance, selling off the family silver (and anything else), chiselling money wherever he can, even at one stage damming the river that runs through Newstead's grounds, in order that he might extort huge fees from those downstream for the privilege of his visiting neither drought nor flood on them. And then, when it was pointed out in the courts that even 18th century aristocrats couldn't take the piss quite that much, the very picture of outraged entitlement at this unforgivable intrusion on his perceived rights! Not that he was any better in his youth, having always been pushy and arrogant when he thought he was in the stronger position, and a snivelling coward the minute anyone pushed back - whether that be an intended 'romantic' conquest, or the Jacobites. Rackety in youth, miserly in old age, Brand gamely attempts to elicit some sympathy for the old bastard, but it's a losing battle. Although Doctor Who fans will be particularly interested in William's wife, Elizabeth Shaw - a possible alternative fate for her? And, while fairly ghastly, no worse than she normally seems to suffer in the spin-offs, poor woman.
It's clearly William's generation who most caught Brand's attention; the beastly Baron himself, his naval brother John, their romantic sister Isabella, and the other two. I suspect this may be at least in part down to the richness of the archival material for that period, and she has dug into the primary sources for it; earlier generations, on the other hand, are a little prone to getting lost in a thicket of 'might' and 'perhaps', and too much being inferred from comparison with a family of similar station when the whole reason we're reading the book is the particularity of this clan. Still, once she gets on to her stars, and to a slightly lesser extent their children (the generation including the poet's parents), the book comes alive. For all its research, it still dallies with the novelistic school of history/biography, and I'm sure the italicised passages of presumed interiority in particular will make some purists' skin crawl. Still, fuck it - history is always telling stories to some extent, and there are benefits to being blatant about that. If anything, my main problem is the stories missed along the way; compared to the last literary biography I read, Eleanor Fitzsimons on Nesbit, there's a sad lack of introductions to other characters of note whose paths cross the Byrons'. Sure, we probably don't need an explanation of Samuel Johnson, and even Charles James Fox you can maybe get away with just dropping in, but it seems a shame not to tell readers more about the now largely forgotten figures of the age, for example George Selwyn. He was a close friend of Isabella's son Frederick, and there are several quotes from their correspondence, but if you didn't know the period you'd assume that was about it, and have him down as a fairly generic gentleman and inactive MP, when in fact he was a spectacularly weird figure even by the standards of the time, dogged by (oddly fond, at least sometimes) rumours of necrophilia.
If there's any kind of hero in the book it's probably John, one of the figures here who'd merit the occasional biography even if he hadn't ended up with a more famous descendant. A sailor, he would rise to the rank of Vice-Admiral and command British forces in America's war of independence; on earlier missions, he'd established Britain's claim to the Falklands (the only other inhabitants at the time, it should be noted, were French – no indigenous people; no Argentinians, because they didn't exist yet; not even any Spaniards), completed what was at the time the fastest circumnavigation of the globe, and paved the way (if that's not an entirely inappropriate metaphor at sea) for the subsequent voyages of Captain Cook. Compared to most of the Byrons, he was also reasonably good at not being an utter swine to his spouse (even if, among various other infidelities, she did walk in on him screwing the teenage chambermaid) or spending way beyond his means (even if he still ended up having to sell his Grosvenor Square house to cover various debts – and worse, seeing it taken by his old foe John Adams, who would make it the first US embassy in Britain). He was also, alas, spectacularly unlucky. His first big naval trip turned into an epic tale of shipwreck, mutiny and woe, the account of which is filled with sentences like this: "Their first meal for two days was a miserable soup cobbled together from wild celery, a seagull and a bag of 'biscuit dust' which turned out to have been mixed with tobacco and prompted violent retching." Even speaking as a spectacularly fussy eater who once faced Sushisamba's attempt at a vegetarian tasting menu, this sounds like a contender for the worst meal ever, and it's by no means the end of their sorrows. Bodies start turning up, people start going mad, shoes get eaten. John meets and befriends a feral dog, which helps him hunt, but then also gets eaten. When the few survivors finally make it back to Britain, there's a strangely polite court martial which concludes that on the whole it couldn't be helped and doesn't dish out anything worse than a slap on the wrist to one ensign. And after all that, oblivious either to good sense or irony, he's given command of a ship called HMS Vulture!
The worst of it is, that's not even the trip that earned him the sobriquet 'Foul-Weather Jack'. Plenty more nautical nonsense lies ahead – sailors trading their spare shirts for monkeys, the lot. One is left with the impression of a decent-ish fellow with whom you'd nonetheless be reluctant even to go for a walk down the road to the pub, because it would somehow end up with you tumbling into a distant volcano. On top of which, it's an unfortunate alias because as is so often the way with aristocratic families (or indeed, just inefficient families), certain names recur; John's son was also John, but is referred to throughout the book as Jack. He's the one who fathered the poet, and while it might be considered prejudicial, it could also have been clearer to have him as 'Mad Jack' for avoidance of confusion. Lords know, it's not like the ghastly little prick doesn't deserve it, crowing about his own irresistibility and then kicking the maid downstairs at Christmas.
And then you have poor Isabella. In some ways she does very well for herself, marrying up into the Howards (of 'home used for eighties Brideshead' fame, but also one of England's great families in general). She rather takes to domestic life, too, amassing a considerable brood, not to mention a collection of helpful home remedies about as appetising as John's soup – viper broth for fever, anyone? Alas, as will tend to happen when you marry someone a lot older, he doesn't last long, leaving her young son Frederick as Earl of Carlisle (he will go on to be our chief negotiator with the rebellious American colonies, and be challenged to a duel by Lafayette). Isabella, still pretty young by our standards (and not that old even by her time's), likewise becomes Dowager Countess, a station not generally thought to be compatible with staying out dancing and flirting until four in the morning. This could easily be a story of a fun, unconventional woman brought low by sexist times, and to some extent it is, but dear heavens she has terrible taste in men, taking up with a succession of unsuitable types from quiet homebodies to grasping faux-noblemen, and always so softhearted that she keeps funnelling money she doesn't have to various of her impecunious relations, all of whom can then be guaranteed to spend it on something unsuitable before the week is out. In the end, she presents at once a tragic and bathetic figure, neatly summarised by Brand: "She had always been ready to forgive, especially where affairs of the heart were concerned – her downfall had been that she expected the same favour from others."
Running through all this, though, are the details which to us necessarily feel like they prefigure the family's most famous son. Isabella dallies with someone who ends up marrying one of her daughters, round about the same time as William's son breaks an engagement to marry one of John's daughters. As if that weren't sufficient incest theme to set it up, some of Mad Jack's letters to his sister Fanny (and no, the name doesn't help) are tough not to read extremely suspiciously. Nor do they restrain themselves to this line of debauchery; the whole pack (with the possible exception of Reverend Richard, one of the two less exciting siblings who don't feature much) seem to be massive shaggers in general; granted, this was not unusual for men of their age and station, but the women are at it too, not least Isabella's daughter Betty, who at 46 married a naval captain half her age - and who was her daughter-in-law's brother, at that. About the only innovation the most famous Byron seems to have introduced was going for his own sex too. Similarly, he wasn't the family's first writer; several of them wrote bits of poetry, and published works included John's account of his voyages, and Isabella's maxims for young ladies (the latter generally reviewed with an understandable raised eyebrow, as commendable theory she had not herself necessarily manifested in practice). Would any of them be much read now? Well, maybe not, but then how much is Byron actually read compared to how often he's used as shorthand? One of the ahistorical biases which always irks me is the reflex mockery of any creative stirrings by the child of a famous parent. Now, granted, in a world which offers Adam Cohen and Nikolai Tolstoy, the temptation makes sense, and I was as happy as anyone to rip the piss when Bono's son's band was tipped as one to watch in 2020. But equally we should remember how many figures who now seem to stand alone as blazing figures in history were themselves children of the famous when they began, and only subsequently came to eclipse their forebears. Wilde's one classic example, and really Byron is another – it's just that by any standard Byron's inheritance was an especially mixed one. "Some curse hangs over me and mine," he wrote, like the big old goth he was – but he was by no means the first of the line even to suspect that. "There is some Misfortune cast on our family," said Jack; Isabella, that "There is a Planet overrules sone Familys & blasts every Prospect". One might legitimately object that all three of these witnesses were, to use the technical term, messy bitches who live for the drama, but at one point even the more stoical Doctor Johnson suggested "Fiction durst not have driven upon a few months such a conflux of misery", and Foul-Weather Jack was held in Francophone Canada to have become a sort of Flying Dutchman as punishment for his burning of villages in a 1760 conflict. Meaning that by the end, the Poe resonances of the title don't seem entirely unfair – even if there is a certain sleight of hand at work. Because after the poet, himself more an implicit figure here than someone followed in any great detail (there are, after all, plenty of other biographies for that), the title would survive, and pass to another of the more respectable-ish Byrons, after the model of John – another seafaring hero, George Anson Byron. About whom I can only ever picture Byron himself bitterly singing the Undertones' 'My Perfect Cousin'.
(Netgalley ARC)
It's clearly William's generation who most caught Brand's attention; the beastly Baron himself, his naval brother John, their romantic sister Isabella, and the other two. I suspect this may be at least in part down to the richness of the archival material for that period, and she has dug into the primary sources for it; earlier generations, on the other hand, are a little prone to getting lost in a thicket of 'might' and 'perhaps', and too much being inferred from comparison with a family of similar station when the whole reason we're reading the book is the particularity of this clan. Still, once she gets on to her stars, and to a slightly lesser extent their children (the generation including the poet's parents), the book comes alive. For all its research, it still dallies with the novelistic school of history/biography, and I'm sure the italicised passages of presumed interiority in particular will make some purists' skin crawl. Still, fuck it - history is always telling stories to some extent, and there are benefits to being blatant about that. If anything, my main problem is the stories missed along the way; compared to the last literary biography I read, Eleanor Fitzsimons on Nesbit, there's a sad lack of introductions to other characters of note whose paths cross the Byrons'. Sure, we probably don't need an explanation of Samuel Johnson, and even Charles James Fox you can maybe get away with just dropping in, but it seems a shame not to tell readers more about the now largely forgotten figures of the age, for example George Selwyn. He was a close friend of Isabella's son Frederick, and there are several quotes from their correspondence, but if you didn't know the period you'd assume that was about it, and have him down as a fairly generic gentleman and inactive MP, when in fact he was a spectacularly weird figure even by the standards of the time, dogged by (oddly fond, at least sometimes) rumours of necrophilia.
If there's any kind of hero in the book it's probably John, one of the figures here who'd merit the occasional biography even if he hadn't ended up with a more famous descendant. A sailor, he would rise to the rank of Vice-Admiral and command British forces in America's war of independence; on earlier missions, he'd established Britain's claim to the Falklands (the only other inhabitants at the time, it should be noted, were French – no indigenous people; no Argentinians, because they didn't exist yet; not even any Spaniards), completed what was at the time the fastest circumnavigation of the globe, and paved the way (if that's not an entirely inappropriate metaphor at sea) for the subsequent voyages of Captain Cook. Compared to most of the Byrons, he was also reasonably good at not being an utter swine to his spouse (even if, among various other infidelities, she did walk in on him screwing the teenage chambermaid) or spending way beyond his means (even if he still ended up having to sell his Grosvenor Square house to cover various debts – and worse, seeing it taken by his old foe John Adams, who would make it the first US embassy in Britain). He was also, alas, spectacularly unlucky. His first big naval trip turned into an epic tale of shipwreck, mutiny and woe, the account of which is filled with sentences like this: "Their first meal for two days was a miserable soup cobbled together from wild celery, a seagull and a bag of 'biscuit dust' which turned out to have been mixed with tobacco and prompted violent retching." Even speaking as a spectacularly fussy eater who once faced Sushisamba's attempt at a vegetarian tasting menu, this sounds like a contender for the worst meal ever, and it's by no means the end of their sorrows. Bodies start turning up, people start going mad, shoes get eaten. John meets and befriends a feral dog, which helps him hunt, but then also gets eaten. When the few survivors finally make it back to Britain, there's a strangely polite court martial which concludes that on the whole it couldn't be helped and doesn't dish out anything worse than a slap on the wrist to one ensign. And after all that, oblivious either to good sense or irony, he's given command of a ship called HMS Vulture!
The worst of it is, that's not even the trip that earned him the sobriquet 'Foul-Weather Jack'. Plenty more nautical nonsense lies ahead – sailors trading their spare shirts for monkeys, the lot. One is left with the impression of a decent-ish fellow with whom you'd nonetheless be reluctant even to go for a walk down the road to the pub, because it would somehow end up with you tumbling into a distant volcano. On top of which, it's an unfortunate alias because as is so often the way with aristocratic families (or indeed, just inefficient families), certain names recur; John's son was also John, but is referred to throughout the book as Jack. He's the one who fathered the poet, and while it might be considered prejudicial, it could also have been clearer to have him as 'Mad Jack' for avoidance of confusion. Lords know, it's not like the ghastly little prick doesn't deserve it, crowing about his own irresistibility and then kicking the maid downstairs at Christmas.
And then you have poor Isabella. In some ways she does very well for herself, marrying up into the Howards (of 'home used for eighties Brideshead' fame, but also one of England's great families in general). She rather takes to domestic life, too, amassing a considerable brood, not to mention a collection of helpful home remedies about as appetising as John's soup – viper broth for fever, anyone? Alas, as will tend to happen when you marry someone a lot older, he doesn't last long, leaving her young son Frederick as Earl of Carlisle (he will go on to be our chief negotiator with the rebellious American colonies, and be challenged to a duel by Lafayette). Isabella, still pretty young by our standards (and not that old even by her time's), likewise becomes Dowager Countess, a station not generally thought to be compatible with staying out dancing and flirting until four in the morning. This could easily be a story of a fun, unconventional woman brought low by sexist times, and to some extent it is, but dear heavens she has terrible taste in men, taking up with a succession of unsuitable types from quiet homebodies to grasping faux-noblemen, and always so softhearted that she keeps funnelling money she doesn't have to various of her impecunious relations, all of whom can then be guaranteed to spend it on something unsuitable before the week is out. In the end, she presents at once a tragic and bathetic figure, neatly summarised by Brand: "She had always been ready to forgive, especially where affairs of the heart were concerned – her downfall had been that she expected the same favour from others."
Running through all this, though, are the details which to us necessarily feel like they prefigure the family's most famous son. Isabella dallies with someone who ends up marrying one of her daughters, round about the same time as William's son breaks an engagement to marry one of John's daughters. As if that weren't sufficient incest theme to set it up, some of Mad Jack's letters to his sister Fanny (and no, the name doesn't help) are tough not to read extremely suspiciously. Nor do they restrain themselves to this line of debauchery; the whole pack (with the possible exception of Reverend Richard, one of the two less exciting siblings who don't feature much) seem to be massive shaggers in general; granted, this was not unusual for men of their age and station, but the women are at it too, not least Isabella's daughter Betty, who at 46 married a naval captain half her age - and who was her daughter-in-law's brother, at that. About the only innovation the most famous Byron seems to have introduced was going for his own sex too. Similarly, he wasn't the family's first writer; several of them wrote bits of poetry, and published works included John's account of his voyages, and Isabella's maxims for young ladies (the latter generally reviewed with an understandable raised eyebrow, as commendable theory she had not herself necessarily manifested in practice). Would any of them be much read now? Well, maybe not, but then how much is Byron actually read compared to how often he's used as shorthand? One of the ahistorical biases which always irks me is the reflex mockery of any creative stirrings by the child of a famous parent. Now, granted, in a world which offers Adam Cohen and Nikolai Tolstoy, the temptation makes sense, and I was as happy as anyone to rip the piss when Bono's son's band was tipped as one to watch in 2020. But equally we should remember how many figures who now seem to stand alone as blazing figures in history were themselves children of the famous when they began, and only subsequently came to eclipse their forebears. Wilde's one classic example, and really Byron is another – it's just that by any standard Byron's inheritance was an especially mixed one. "Some curse hangs over me and mine," he wrote, like the big old goth he was – but he was by no means the first of the line even to suspect that. "There is some Misfortune cast on our family," said Jack; Isabella, that "There is a Planet overrules sone Familys & blasts every Prospect". One might legitimately object that all three of these witnesses were, to use the technical term, messy bitches who live for the drama, but at one point even the more stoical Doctor Johnson suggested "Fiction durst not have driven upon a few months such a conflux of misery", and Foul-Weather Jack was held in Francophone Canada to have become a sort of Flying Dutchman as punishment for his burning of villages in a 1760 conflict. Meaning that by the end, the Poe resonances of the title don't seem entirely unfair – even if there is a certain sleight of hand at work. Because after the poet, himself more an implicit figure here than someone followed in any great detail (there are, after all, plenty of other biographies for that), the title would survive, and pass to another of the more respectable-ish Byrons, after the model of John – another seafaring hero, George Anson Byron. About whom I can only ever picture Byron himself bitterly singing the Undertones' 'My Perfect Cousin'.
(Netgalley ARC)
January 9, 2020
I received an ARc from Netgalley in return for an honest review.
I have mixed feelings about this book.
The author has clearly done an enormous amount of research and it shows. In fact it shows too much. Chunks of it are like an info-dump - heavy, brutal and almost indecipherable. Other parts are beautifully descriptive and almost poetic. I found the flipping backwards and forwards in the timeline really disjointed and confusing. I realise the author was talking about the Byron family as a whole and using George, Lord Byron as the tease but it didn’t always work for me. I found the changing tenses really irritating. I prefer a consistent. Past tense in reporting historical events.
On the whole I commend the hard work that the author put in to this book; it will probably become a fixed text in academia but I cannot say I enjoyed it all. I think it’s a book to dip into for short tasters which will fascinate and entertain. It wasn’t a book that I found easy to read from beginning to end uninterrupted!
I have mixed feelings about this book.
The author has clearly done an enormous amount of research and it shows. In fact it shows too much. Chunks of it are like an info-dump - heavy, brutal and almost indecipherable. Other parts are beautifully descriptive and almost poetic. I found the flipping backwards and forwards in the timeline really disjointed and confusing. I realise the author was talking about the Byron family as a whole and using George, Lord Byron as the tease but it didn’t always work for me. I found the changing tenses really irritating. I prefer a consistent. Past tense in reporting historical events.
On the whole I commend the hard work that the author put in to this book; it will probably become a fixed text in academia but I cannot say I enjoyed it all. I think it’s a book to dip into for short tasters which will fascinate and entertain. It wasn’t a book that I found easy to read from beginning to end uninterrupted!
January 29, 2021
This was extremely well written and very interesting (although I was very glad of the family tree printed at the start of the book).
June 19, 2025
"The ghosts that he first encountered at the Abbey assemble into one remarkable dynasty: this man a hero; this man a villain; and in their shadow, the women upholding the family name. Heirs, warriors, mothers and lovers - all acting out the roles they were born to play. Like those curious figures on the courtyard fountain, they present a parade of monsters and saints, and men in masquerade."
4,5/5!
We all know Lord Byron - the mad, bad and dangerous to know poet - but who were his parents, his grandparents? Where did he come from? In her book, Emily Brand tells the story of the previous generations of Byrons and how, essentially, their house fell from grace and what wealth their ancestors had managed to scrape together. It's a story of scandal, adultery, shipwreck, passion, betrayal and murder, relayed to us through the life stories of many family members but, above all, the siblings William, the 5th Lord Byron, his younger brother (and the poet's grandpa) John, known also as Foul-Weather Jack, and their older sister, Isabella.
The poet once wrote: "Some curse hangs over me and mine." After reading this book, while I do not believe in any actual curses, I cannot blame him for thinking so. The Byrons were, I learned, to put it mildly, a rather bonkers family. Apart from a few standout individuals who seemed like normal, nice people, this family was littered with rather eccentric figures who all caused scandal after scandal in their lifetime which, naturally, made this a very engaging and interesting book, one I kept reading even after I got a fever and had a pounding headache. I just had to get to the ending and learn what happened to all of these people. Emily Brand's mix of nonfiction with little fictionalised interludes worked for me, but I can see why some people would find it off-putting in a non-fiction book.
The three central Byrons of the book were all very vivid characters and I liked how Brand took time to really explore all of them equally, detailing all the weird and wacky events of their life. I feel like they all deserve their own little section of this review, so here goes:
William, the so-called Wicked Lord Byron, was, I feel comfortable saying, an absolute asshole. He seemed like one of those men who just never grows up and remains this petulant, entitled child for the rest of their life. He enjoyed the privileges of his station but never bothered to fulfil any of its duties. Some stories that I'd say give a good indication as to what he was like are A) that he joined the army to fight the Jacobite rebels but then dropped out just before a big fight, B) he killed a man, Chaworth, at a bar when drunk (he was tried for murder but ended up just fined as punishment for manslaughter), C) an actress, George Anne Bellamy, claimed in her memoir that after she refused him, he had her kidnapped and later harassed her with letters and threats of self-harm if she did not see him, and D) he wasted all his money and was so desperate for cash that he built a dam on his lands and wanted to charge the local businesses that relied on the water flow for access to water. It is no wonder he becomes a subject of all kinds of dark rumours of devils in his garden, murder and abduction, of domestic abuse and general cruelty. Whether most of those stories have any basis in reality or not, he was a truly abysmal person, with absolutely no ability to control his spending and who seemed to care, above all, about money. One of the people I felt most bad for in the whole book was his long-suffering wife, Elizabeth.
Isabella seemed like one of those women I would love to spend an evening with chatting and listening to music (she was known for her love of music and her musical soirees) but who might be a lot to handle as a wife, a sister or a mother. She was social and giddy and did not care too much about what other people thought which is, to our eyes, quite admirable, but which caused her family a lot of stress because she followed her heart into great many a scandal: after her respectable marriage to Lord Carlisle ended in his death, she married a much younger man (it was okay for men to marry girls in their late-teens, but the other way around? Oh, no!) and after separating from him, she lived in France for 14 years, a lot of the time with a much younger man, Weinheim, who claimed to be a baron when they were out together. It was frustrating to read about how people saw her, a mother and an aging woman, as inherently ridiculous and wrong because she liked to flirt, dance, party and wanted romance. Aging women are still today often seen as silly and inappropriate if they dare to step outside the comfortable box society likes to place them in. Her family laboured to get her back from France, which she really didn't want to do (they sent spies to lure her back – it was that drastic!), and when she eventually did make her way back to England for good, she had lost all her reputation, was severely in debt, dependant upon her son and quite sad. I get why her family was worried - she did spend wildly and uncontrollably (this family had some serious issues with money) and she did shame their family name - but at the same time, I was angry for her. She wanted a big life, but ended up dying quite alone, her reputation in tatters and no grand love by her side. She wrote a lot in her lifetime and it was fun how Emily Brand was able to quote her directly a whole lot: it made her feel more alive, more tangible.
John, or Foul-Weather Jack, lived one of those lives that you think would only exist in movies or novels. He embarked upon a mission as a young navy man of 17 in 1740 (all of the following was made extra horrible once I realized he was only a kid when it happened) aboard the Wager, and ends up living through absolute hell. The ship crashes and is marooned, there's mutinies and murder, people die of starvation and scurvy all around him, and eventually he, after the mutineers leave, remains with his captain with but a few other crew mates. The men of the Wager encounter indigenous peoples who offer them help and guidance, but then, obviously, one of the crew men tries to "seduce" the wives of the indigenous folk (I assume this means rape). John gets dysentry. He finds a dog but it ends up eaten. They are discovered by another indigenous tribe who escort them to a spanish settlement where they are given help. In another settlement they are held captive and only the kindness of the locals keeps them alive. It takes him four years to finally get home. It's horrible. Later in his life he becomes this great, renowned commander, who is respected by his crew (they like him so much that once, after a journey, it is said they came to his home singing and playing instruments and thanked him for being such a good boss), but his journeys tend to be a bit disappointing. When sent to find and claim land for the King, he finds a few islands (one of which is already under French control, it turns out) and nothing more, and later, when he is sent to fight off the French in America, he is, at every point on the journey, faced with truly awful weather; his fleet wrecked, he himself is injured, their chase prevented. This earned him his rather cool nickname.
This book was just full of crazy stories - some fun, most of them abysmal. William's son, William, did not just break off his engagement - he ran off, on the eve of his wedding, with his cousin, John's daughter, Juliana. John, seemingly bored as an older man living a life lacking in adventure, seduced a 19-year-old chambermaid of his wife's and was discovered, by his wife Sophia, in their bed with the maid (all this of course ended up in the local gossip rag, making it all extra humiliating for Sophia). Mad Jack Byron (the poet's father, notorious money-spender and generally an untrustworthy shithead) ran off with a married mother of three, Amelia, who got divorced very publicly and lost everything to be with this asshat of a man. The same Jack also seems to have had an incestuous relationship with his sister Fanny – he wrote to her about his sexual escapades, said he is mad that he is her brother and, essentially, that whenever he has sex he thinks of her (funnily enough, his son the poet would also have an incestuous relationship – to his half-sister, Augusta). George Anson, John's son, got hitched in Jamaica to a bastard girl and caused a ruckus: the couple loved each other (they died only months apart) but the family was highly skeptical of Henrietta, which says a lot about how foreigners and those of "low birth" were considered.
But while this book is full of scandal and chaos, there were also some lovely stories peppered in. George Anson and Henrietta loved one another dearly despite his family's objections to their marriage – he was brokenhearted when she died and died himself but a few months after her. Sophia, though she ended up not that close to her children (she annoyed them, it seems) had some decades-long friendships. Isabella seemed to always want to help those around her, even if it meant she threw away money she did not actually have to do so. John's letters to his daughters were genuinely sweet and full of fatherly love. Even amidst the horror of the Wager, there were glimpses of humanity: in his book John wrote about sitting by the side of his friends and feeding them even though he knew they would not survive, they were helped by indigenous peoples to survive and find food, and so on. But on the whole, it is a rather gloomy family saga, one of decay and ruination, broken hearts and lonely fates.
The last thing I wanna talk about is how this book contextualises the poet. I feel like we easily think of him as this lone wolf, this singular peculiar man, and while I believe he is one-of-a-kind, he comes from a long line of peculiar individuals. And considering just how important his family legacy seemed to have been for him, I think this deserves to be talked of more. He wrote about his aunts, uncles and grandparents in his poems, and he felt a deep connection to the near ruined Newstead Abbey. He relished in the "curse" of his bloodline and the dark stories of his family, but he also defended them against slander and gossip. This book also makes it clear how much of an outsider he was: he grew up in Scotland, in his mother's country, and his relatives never really knew him (they didn't like his mother, it seems) until he inherited. He then became close with some of them, but not all. But despite growing up so far away and hearing mostly negative stuff about his dad's family from his mom, he grew to really embrace his name of Byron. It was fun reading about all the chaotic stories of his family members, knowing that the most chaotic and notorious one of them all is yet to come. I liked this quote from Emily Brand: "Following decades of scandal, sorrow and triumph, the fall of the House of Byron had given rise to its most notorious figure: George would be a hero and a villain, at once the privileged elite and an outrageous radical. His inheritance was a picture of perfect desolation, and he was 'the wreck of the line that have held it in sway'. 'Newstead', he wiill declare, 'has always suited me better than any other'."
I would recommend The Fall of the House of Byron to anyone interested in Lord Byron (he appears a bit in the book, especially near the end, but I think, if you really like him, you should also get to know his family), Georgian society and life, or stories of wacky family drama. It's a relatively short book but full of information and direct quotes from poems and letters (it is meticulously researched), and it gives you such a good overview of the few generations before the poet enters the picture and becomes the "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron we hate to love and love to hate.
Here are some interesting facts I learned while reading:
- Samuel Pepys, the diarist, claimed that one of the reasons why the Byron family was elevated to the peerage was that the Lady Byron of the time slept with King Charles II.
- George Byron, the younger of Isabella, William and John, had, as one of his godparents, King George II.
- Child mortality and infant mortality rates were terrifying at this point (it seems baffling to a modern reader just how many kids die in this "story") – by the time William, John and their brothers were kids, some parents didn't want to send their kids to schools, preferred to have them home-schooled, because of fear of disease.
- William Byron, the 5th Lord, had a race horse called Why Do You Slight Me?
- After the Wager wreck, when stuck on an island, John found a dog he named Boxer. He hunted with it and befriended it, but eventually, his crewmates demanded it for food. John resisted at first but eventually, in desperation, ate Boxer as well.
- George III was the first "home-grown" monarch in 50 years when he inherited the throne.
- The impact of John Byron's navy career and legacy is still visible today: in Australia, there is Byron Bay (originally named, by James Cook, in honor of Byron, as Cape Byron), there's Byron Island off the Chilean Coast, Byron Bay in Newfoundland and Byron Heights in Falklands.
- Both Isabella and John became published authors: John wrote his memoirs, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron about his travels and misadventures, and Isabella, ironically, considering her dubious reputation, published an etiquette guide to young ladies.
- At this time, if a couple got divorced, they could remarry but if they only legally separated, they couldn't remarry while the other still lived.
- The first man in parliament who supported George III's demand for punitive action against the rebelling americans, after the Declaration of Independence, was Frederick, Isabella's son. He was also sent to negotiate to America, where he was challenged to a duel - which he declined - by Marquis de Lafayette.
- George Byron's son Frederick George became a known and popular political cartoonist.
- Newstead Abbey was eventually sold in 1817 and Old Joe Murray, who had looked after it and the family for decades, died in 1820: to the poet, this marked the end of an era.
- During John's time in the navy, not many commanders considered it important to give their men fresh food and vegetables, but John did: he had as much fresh food on board as he could. Overall, he seemed to have been a respected, firm and caring leader - stern if he had to - but someone who wanted the best for his men.
- Navy wives, such as Sophia (John's cousin and wife), were often in charge of their husband's affairs and money when they were away (they had an important role in supporting their careers in this way) and many of them adopted navy slang into their language.
- The poet inherited very randomly: the one who was meant to inherit was hit by a cannon ball when fighting the French at Corsica. Later, George Anson's son, George Anson Jr., becomes the 7th Lord Byron after the poet dies.
4,5/5!
We all know Lord Byron - the mad, bad and dangerous to know poet - but who were his parents, his grandparents? Where did he come from? In her book, Emily Brand tells the story of the previous generations of Byrons and how, essentially, their house fell from grace and what wealth their ancestors had managed to scrape together. It's a story of scandal, adultery, shipwreck, passion, betrayal and murder, relayed to us through the life stories of many family members but, above all, the siblings William, the 5th Lord Byron, his younger brother (and the poet's grandpa) John, known also as Foul-Weather Jack, and their older sister, Isabella.
The poet once wrote: "Some curse hangs over me and mine." After reading this book, while I do not believe in any actual curses, I cannot blame him for thinking so. The Byrons were, I learned, to put it mildly, a rather bonkers family. Apart from a few standout individuals who seemed like normal, nice people, this family was littered with rather eccentric figures who all caused scandal after scandal in their lifetime which, naturally, made this a very engaging and interesting book, one I kept reading even after I got a fever and had a pounding headache. I just had to get to the ending and learn what happened to all of these people. Emily Brand's mix of nonfiction with little fictionalised interludes worked for me, but I can see why some people would find it off-putting in a non-fiction book.
The three central Byrons of the book were all very vivid characters and I liked how Brand took time to really explore all of them equally, detailing all the weird and wacky events of their life. I feel like they all deserve their own little section of this review, so here goes:
William, the so-called Wicked Lord Byron, was, I feel comfortable saying, an absolute asshole. He seemed like one of those men who just never grows up and remains this petulant, entitled child for the rest of their life. He enjoyed the privileges of his station but never bothered to fulfil any of its duties. Some stories that I'd say give a good indication as to what he was like are A) that he joined the army to fight the Jacobite rebels but then dropped out just before a big fight, B) he killed a man, Chaworth, at a bar when drunk (he was tried for murder but ended up just fined as punishment for manslaughter), C) an actress, George Anne Bellamy, claimed in her memoir that after she refused him, he had her kidnapped and later harassed her with letters and threats of self-harm if she did not see him, and D) he wasted all his money and was so desperate for cash that he built a dam on his lands and wanted to charge the local businesses that relied on the water flow for access to water. It is no wonder he becomes a subject of all kinds of dark rumours of devils in his garden, murder and abduction, of domestic abuse and general cruelty. Whether most of those stories have any basis in reality or not, he was a truly abysmal person, with absolutely no ability to control his spending and who seemed to care, above all, about money. One of the people I felt most bad for in the whole book was his long-suffering wife, Elizabeth.
Isabella seemed like one of those women I would love to spend an evening with chatting and listening to music (she was known for her love of music and her musical soirees) but who might be a lot to handle as a wife, a sister or a mother. She was social and giddy and did not care too much about what other people thought which is, to our eyes, quite admirable, but which caused her family a lot of stress because she followed her heart into great many a scandal: after her respectable marriage to Lord Carlisle ended in his death, she married a much younger man (it was okay for men to marry girls in their late-teens, but the other way around? Oh, no!) and after separating from him, she lived in France for 14 years, a lot of the time with a much younger man, Weinheim, who claimed to be a baron when they were out together. It was frustrating to read about how people saw her, a mother and an aging woman, as inherently ridiculous and wrong because she liked to flirt, dance, party and wanted romance. Aging women are still today often seen as silly and inappropriate if they dare to step outside the comfortable box society likes to place them in. Her family laboured to get her back from France, which she really didn't want to do (they sent spies to lure her back – it was that drastic!), and when she eventually did make her way back to England for good, she had lost all her reputation, was severely in debt, dependant upon her son and quite sad. I get why her family was worried - she did spend wildly and uncontrollably (this family had some serious issues with money) and she did shame their family name - but at the same time, I was angry for her. She wanted a big life, but ended up dying quite alone, her reputation in tatters and no grand love by her side. She wrote a lot in her lifetime and it was fun how Emily Brand was able to quote her directly a whole lot: it made her feel more alive, more tangible.
John, or Foul-Weather Jack, lived one of those lives that you think would only exist in movies or novels. He embarked upon a mission as a young navy man of 17 in 1740 (all of the following was made extra horrible once I realized he was only a kid when it happened) aboard the Wager, and ends up living through absolute hell. The ship crashes and is marooned, there's mutinies and murder, people die of starvation and scurvy all around him, and eventually he, after the mutineers leave, remains with his captain with but a few other crew mates. The men of the Wager encounter indigenous peoples who offer them help and guidance, but then, obviously, one of the crew men tries to "seduce" the wives of the indigenous folk (I assume this means rape). John gets dysentry. He finds a dog but it ends up eaten. They are discovered by another indigenous tribe who escort them to a spanish settlement where they are given help. In another settlement they are held captive and only the kindness of the locals keeps them alive. It takes him four years to finally get home. It's horrible. Later in his life he becomes this great, renowned commander, who is respected by his crew (they like him so much that once, after a journey, it is said they came to his home singing and playing instruments and thanked him for being such a good boss), but his journeys tend to be a bit disappointing. When sent to find and claim land for the King, he finds a few islands (one of which is already under French control, it turns out) and nothing more, and later, when he is sent to fight off the French in America, he is, at every point on the journey, faced with truly awful weather; his fleet wrecked, he himself is injured, their chase prevented. This earned him his rather cool nickname.
This book was just full of crazy stories - some fun, most of them abysmal. William's son, William, did not just break off his engagement - he ran off, on the eve of his wedding, with his cousin, John's daughter, Juliana. John, seemingly bored as an older man living a life lacking in adventure, seduced a 19-year-old chambermaid of his wife's and was discovered, by his wife Sophia, in their bed with the maid (all this of course ended up in the local gossip rag, making it all extra humiliating for Sophia). Mad Jack Byron (the poet's father, notorious money-spender and generally an untrustworthy shithead) ran off with a married mother of three, Amelia, who got divorced very publicly and lost everything to be with this asshat of a man. The same Jack also seems to have had an incestuous relationship with his sister Fanny – he wrote to her about his sexual escapades, said he is mad that he is her brother and, essentially, that whenever he has sex he thinks of her (funnily enough, his son the poet would also have an incestuous relationship – to his half-sister, Augusta). George Anson, John's son, got hitched in Jamaica to a bastard girl and caused a ruckus: the couple loved each other (they died only months apart) but the family was highly skeptical of Henrietta, which says a lot about how foreigners and those of "low birth" were considered.
But while this book is full of scandal and chaos, there were also some lovely stories peppered in. George Anson and Henrietta loved one another dearly despite his family's objections to their marriage – he was brokenhearted when she died and died himself but a few months after her. Sophia, though she ended up not that close to her children (she annoyed them, it seems) had some decades-long friendships. Isabella seemed to always want to help those around her, even if it meant she threw away money she did not actually have to do so. John's letters to his daughters were genuinely sweet and full of fatherly love. Even amidst the horror of the Wager, there were glimpses of humanity: in his book John wrote about sitting by the side of his friends and feeding them even though he knew they would not survive, they were helped by indigenous peoples to survive and find food, and so on. But on the whole, it is a rather gloomy family saga, one of decay and ruination, broken hearts and lonely fates.
The last thing I wanna talk about is how this book contextualises the poet. I feel like we easily think of him as this lone wolf, this singular peculiar man, and while I believe he is one-of-a-kind, he comes from a long line of peculiar individuals. And considering just how important his family legacy seemed to have been for him, I think this deserves to be talked of more. He wrote about his aunts, uncles and grandparents in his poems, and he felt a deep connection to the near ruined Newstead Abbey. He relished in the "curse" of his bloodline and the dark stories of his family, but he also defended them against slander and gossip. This book also makes it clear how much of an outsider he was: he grew up in Scotland, in his mother's country, and his relatives never really knew him (they didn't like his mother, it seems) until he inherited. He then became close with some of them, but not all. But despite growing up so far away and hearing mostly negative stuff about his dad's family from his mom, he grew to really embrace his name of Byron. It was fun reading about all the chaotic stories of his family members, knowing that the most chaotic and notorious one of them all is yet to come. I liked this quote from Emily Brand: "Following decades of scandal, sorrow and triumph, the fall of the House of Byron had given rise to its most notorious figure: George would be a hero and a villain, at once the privileged elite and an outrageous radical. His inheritance was a picture of perfect desolation, and he was 'the wreck of the line that have held it in sway'. 'Newstead', he wiill declare, 'has always suited me better than any other'."
I would recommend The Fall of the House of Byron to anyone interested in Lord Byron (he appears a bit in the book, especially near the end, but I think, if you really like him, you should also get to know his family), Georgian society and life, or stories of wacky family drama. It's a relatively short book but full of information and direct quotes from poems and letters (it is meticulously researched), and it gives you such a good overview of the few generations before the poet enters the picture and becomes the "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron we hate to love and love to hate.
Here are some interesting facts I learned while reading:
- Samuel Pepys, the diarist, claimed that one of the reasons why the Byron family was elevated to the peerage was that the Lady Byron of the time slept with King Charles II.
- George Byron, the younger of Isabella, William and John, had, as one of his godparents, King George II.
- Child mortality and infant mortality rates were terrifying at this point (it seems baffling to a modern reader just how many kids die in this "story") – by the time William, John and their brothers were kids, some parents didn't want to send their kids to schools, preferred to have them home-schooled, because of fear of disease.
- William Byron, the 5th Lord, had a race horse called Why Do You Slight Me?
- After the Wager wreck, when stuck on an island, John found a dog he named Boxer. He hunted with it and befriended it, but eventually, his crewmates demanded it for food. John resisted at first but eventually, in desperation, ate Boxer as well.
- George III was the first "home-grown" monarch in 50 years when he inherited the throne.
- The impact of John Byron's navy career and legacy is still visible today: in Australia, there is Byron Bay (originally named, by James Cook, in honor of Byron, as Cape Byron), there's Byron Island off the Chilean Coast, Byron Bay in Newfoundland and Byron Heights in Falklands.
- Both Isabella and John became published authors: John wrote his memoirs, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron about his travels and misadventures, and Isabella, ironically, considering her dubious reputation, published an etiquette guide to young ladies.
- At this time, if a couple got divorced, they could remarry but if they only legally separated, they couldn't remarry while the other still lived.
- The first man in parliament who supported George III's demand for punitive action against the rebelling americans, after the Declaration of Independence, was Frederick, Isabella's son. He was also sent to negotiate to America, where he was challenged to a duel - which he declined - by Marquis de Lafayette.
- George Byron's son Frederick George became a known and popular political cartoonist.
- Newstead Abbey was eventually sold in 1817 and Old Joe Murray, who had looked after it and the family for decades, died in 1820: to the poet, this marked the end of an era.
- During John's time in the navy, not many commanders considered it important to give their men fresh food and vegetables, but John did: he had as much fresh food on board as he could. Overall, he seemed to have been a respected, firm and caring leader - stern if he had to - but someone who wanted the best for his men.
- Navy wives, such as Sophia (John's cousin and wife), were often in charge of their husband's affairs and money when they were away (they had an important role in supporting their careers in this way) and many of them adopted navy slang into their language.
- The poet inherited very randomly: the one who was meant to inherit was hit by a cannon ball when fighting the French at Corsica. Later, George Anson's son, George Anson Jr., becomes the 7th Lord Byron after the poet dies.
March 18, 2021
Before the famous poet there were others of his name bringing shame and scandal on the family. Brand highlights their deeds in this wonderfully written and highly engaging biography. Some fascinating escapades and I definitely think someone should make a movie or tv series about 'Foul Weather Jack'.
February 12, 2022
Before reading this, I knew little about Byron outside some of his poetry and the more standout facts about his whirlwind of a life. It was great to delve into his background with this deep dive into his family history, and the way the chapters start with links between episodes in the lives of the dynasty's most famous son and his ancestors is quite engaging. More than that, the tales of those of the House of Byron were colourfully appealing in their own right! The author paints a compelling picture of the complex web of family relationships, and how the Byrons changed (or didn't) as they aged. Also, particularly fun for me given I studied the period for my dissertation, the book provided a unique window into aristocratic society in the Age of Revolutions.
Read
January 12, 2025After I finished reading this account of the Byron family in the c18th and early c19th, leading up the the poet we associate with the name, I decided to look at the line of succession to the modern day. In this book we learn the route of succession from the 4th Baron Byron to his son William the 5th Baron Byron to his grandson, the poet 6th Baron Byron. After his death it passed to his cousin who then passed it to his son. The next time that particular barony passed from father to son was the 12th to the 13th, which happened in 1989.
Lads, I think the Byrons might be a little bit cursed.
And that's the thrust of this oddly bleak but hugely well-researched and detailed account of the major figures of the three generations who followed William Byron, the 4th Baron. Looking mostly at William's three oldest children - Isabella, William and John - and their various children of note, it's a fascinating look into how rubbish it was to be a noble back in the c18th. Not that it was better being a regular person, oh no, but the stifling environment of manner, expectations, constant borrowing and lending of cash to bankrupt relatives, marriages of cynical convenience, and at the end of it more than half the people mentioned died prematurely of a bunch of illnesses even the poorest Brits today don't worry about. By the end, I felt that Juliana Howard, youngest child of Isabella who remained unmarried and lived to 99, was the only one to really get away with it. Smart move.
Emily Brand has done a tonne of work pulling out various sources, letters from all manner of connected people, and arranging it into a human tragedy. It's not cheerful reading but it is fascinating seeing the pressures of expectation heaping on top of everyone involved until most of them crack. Nobility is bad for you and should be abolished, yeah?
Lads, I think the Byrons might be a little bit cursed.
And that's the thrust of this oddly bleak but hugely well-researched and detailed account of the major figures of the three generations who followed William Byron, the 4th Baron. Looking mostly at William's three oldest children - Isabella, William and John - and their various children of note, it's a fascinating look into how rubbish it was to be a noble back in the c18th. Not that it was better being a regular person, oh no, but the stifling environment of manner, expectations, constant borrowing and lending of cash to bankrupt relatives, marriages of cynical convenience, and at the end of it more than half the people mentioned died prematurely of a bunch of illnesses even the poorest Brits today don't worry about. By the end, I felt that Juliana Howard, youngest child of Isabella who remained unmarried and lived to 99, was the only one to really get away with it. Smart move.
Emily Brand has done a tonne of work pulling out various sources, letters from all manner of connected people, and arranging it into a human tragedy. It's not cheerful reading but it is fascinating seeing the pressures of expectation heaping on top of everyone involved until most of them crack. Nobility is bad for you and should be abolished, yeah?
January 5, 2020
A captivating read exploring the scandalous ancestry of the poet George Gordon Byron, a man whose poetry is almost overshadowed by his somewhat shadowy reputation as a dangerous bad boy. The premise of the book seems to ask whether Byron's questionable behaviour and challenging of social mores was born with him, was something in his blood, his genetic heritage, or, to quote the poet himself:
The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree
I planted,—they have torn me,—and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed
The book resonates with meticulous research and allows the reader an entrée in to the ballrooms and salons, as well as the ship decks and battlefields of the Georgian era, all seen through the eyes of various members of the Byron family. I particularly enjoyed the account of the struggles of Admiral Byron, or Foulweather Jack, with the author giving a harrowing account of what he endured as he survived mutiny and shipwreck. The narrative overall is well-paced, entertaining and is set out in a clear and easy to read manner, although at times I could have benefitted from a family tree to help place particular family members. Given my own area of interest in marriage and divorce, the book provided me with plenty of the salacious and intricate details of a family littered with fractured or unhappy marriages, and I was encouraged to see the author clearly understood the legal difficulties associated with separation and divorce, particularly as they impacted on the family members. Her knowledge inspires confidence in her telling of the social history of the time.
The author was comfortable in the territory of the Georgian landscape of England, and deftly wove the story of the family, the peerage, and the society in which they lived together into a riveting story, while ensuring that a lack of knowledge about Byron was no barrier to enjoying the book. Overall an enjoyable read.
The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree
I planted,—they have torn me,—and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed
The book resonates with meticulous research and allows the reader an entrée in to the ballrooms and salons, as well as the ship decks and battlefields of the Georgian era, all seen through the eyes of various members of the Byron family. I particularly enjoyed the account of the struggles of Admiral Byron, or Foulweather Jack, with the author giving a harrowing account of what he endured as he survived mutiny and shipwreck. The narrative overall is well-paced, entertaining and is set out in a clear and easy to read manner, although at times I could have benefitted from a family tree to help place particular family members. Given my own area of interest in marriage and divorce, the book provided me with plenty of the salacious and intricate details of a family littered with fractured or unhappy marriages, and I was encouraged to see the author clearly understood the legal difficulties associated with separation and divorce, particularly as they impacted on the family members. Her knowledge inspires confidence in her telling of the social history of the time.
The author was comfortable in the territory of the Georgian landscape of England, and deftly wove the story of the family, the peerage, and the society in which they lived together into a riveting story, while ensuring that a lack of knowledge about Byron was no barrier to enjoying the book. Overall an enjoyable read.
July 27, 2021
At the start of the 18th Century, Newstead Abbey and its occupants seemed blessed. The Fall of the House of Byron doesn't cover this idyll, however: it provides an impeccably researched (and occasionally overwhelmingly detailed) account of the decay of this immensely privileged family. By the end of the century, the Byron name was one of the most infamous in the country. So infamous, in fact, that the most famous of the clan, a poet remembered as much for his sexual exploits as his work, seems almost tame in contrast with his ancestors. It's certainly clear where Lord "Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know" inherited his appetites. In addition to the depth and breadth of sexual adventures, affairs and elopements, are an assortment of maritime adventures, near-death experiences, extortion, kidnapping, and murder.
"Is't not enough the Byrons all excell, As much in loving as in fighting well?"
"Is't not enough the Byrons all excell, As much in loving as in fighting well?"
December 31, 2023
This is a really readable history of the Byron family focusing on the 2 generations before the poet (mostly focused on his grandparents' generation). It is an impressive feat of historical research, which brings together a lot of diverse and previously relatively rarely connected sources. Emily Brand has brought together a vast amount of source material to write up this history!
February 17, 2021
This really was a wonderful read. If you think the poet lord Byron was mad bad and dangerous wait until you meet his ancestors - they make him seem positively tame. We have everything here: adulterers, mad men, con men, women having unsuitable lovers and the odd murderer. A fascinating and wickedly funny read.
June 4, 2021
Pretty good, only 2 really interesting ancestors for me. Well researched, nice style.
June 3, 2020
The book starts in late summer, 1798 and takes readers on a grand tour. The writing is exquisite and the content is rich. I very much like that we meet Joe, a long time steward and readers will then be treated to a tour of Newstead Abbey and into its past and of its priory and monks. The grand tour is written so well, that even if you haven’t been there before, you get a real sense of the Abbey and its grounds and the history each room holds. It’s almost as though you are there on the tour itself. The Abbey is steeped in history, in George’s ancestry, love and scandal.
It’s interesting to learn a bit more about the tragic Frances. In 1726 There was another baby born into the Byron family and such congratulations from Thorsebury Hall and Welbeck Abbey (which can still be visited too) and many more high-standing people such as the Duke of Newcastle at Clumber Park (it is a fine and lovely Nottinghamshire park. I played there as child and walked round with the tread of adult feet).
This book is about Newstead Abbey and the Byrons. It isn’t so much about the life and death of the poet Lord Byron, who we all know, but more how they came to have Newstead Abbey and about the generations of Byrons, perhaps the stories that are less familiar and less told. It is however no less interesting, scandalous and emotional. The author has also told of some of the politics of the time (thankfully not too much). As much as I may have liked to read a bit more about the Lord Byron we know more about and about Newstead Abbey, this is still a very good book. It’s perhaps more unique than that of what has been done before, because there is certainly no reason why all the Byrons shouldn’t be written about. Everything is also put into context very neatly as it also looks at a wide scope of social and political history too. It all adds interest to them and to Newstead Abbey, which is steeped in history, even from the angle Emily Brand has taken. I recommend it.
The book tells of the successes in battle out at sea and of love, as well as the tragedies and ultimately their downfall. The book takes readers, of course to Newstead Abbey itself, but also to other places around Nottinghamshire in England and up to Scotland and abroad, in what is a book so well-written that it feels so remarkably easy to read. The facts are all there, but in such a form that flows even easier than the water mentioned throughout the book. The chapters are named after parts of Newstead Abbey itself, which not only ties in the abbey, although the book also talks about other places, it also feels like this writer is respectful in doing this.
The book then moves onto time spent in London, a far cry from leafy Sherwood Forest, and its new developments and re-builds after the Great Fire of London and the coronation of a new king. There is a well-written contrast between London and the beauty and the nature within Newstead Abbey.
The education of the children is also mentioned and you can feel some of the anguish around it. You learn a great deal about the Byrons and their early life and as their lives develop, sometimes also colliding with tragic times.
The Byron’s certainly were busy as they got involved in shipping on trade and business voyages. There’s also a tragic disappearance of a ship.
Slight political elements are mentioned and this, apart from being interesting as they formed the Byron’s lives, it also firmly, but informally, places useful timelines on what was happening in the wider world too as it goes into events on the fields of Flanders and Scottish clans, as well as skirmishes and worse, that was happening in Edinburgh, Scotland and further up to Culloden, Inverness and up to Aberdeen as this was Jacobean times, before turning attentions back onto Newstead Abbey and the renovations and additions, William introduced to the exterior and interior. I like that someone said the Byron’s were good landlords. There is however, much scandal, including murder. This book really does seem to cover it all, as well as certain ways Lord Byron voted. However, it seems to be Newstead Abbey that is a love and he seems drawn back to Nottinghamshire and his visions for it.
Newstead Abbey 1
Pic of Newstead Abbey – taken by Louise – writer of this blog
The Upper Lake takes readers back to sea, documenting the life and trials there and it’s certainly rough and nothing about it is romantic. I feel the author speaks of a truth and authenticity about the realities of being out at sea.
The Great Dining Hall is back on land with George Byron at Halanby Hall, on his honeymoon as he wed Annabelle Millbanke. He seems romantic, but prone to a temper. Readers can also learn how Byron’s sister became the Countess of Carlisle and her pregnancy and of the entertainment. The writing changes tone, from that of the sea. It has a more romantic air, but each draws you in nearer and yet there always seems to be heartbreak and troubled, tortured times, in amongst the better days.
Folly’s Castle takes readers to the time Lord Byron spent there with fellow poet companions, such as Shelley. The chapter also goes into more revolutionary times and was also happening in America as New York became under British control. Again, however all is not well back at Newstead as it tells of how things were auctioned off at a nearby Mansfield auction house and back at sea was treacherous. The detail put into this, is interesting. It also looks at what was happening in France at the time, with a new Princess being born into Versailles, all the while ensuring attentions are also focussed on Newstead and the Byrons and more scandal over love affairs, this time with Amelia and Jack and their child. I get the feeling times would not have been dull, working within the properties the Byrons used, as a footman was about to find out.
This part also shows Daws in Lancashire and how his property is also somewhat failing .
The Great Gallery is fascinating about the changing fashions in music as Mozart bursts into the music scene and man is starting to conquer the skies, it alludes almost to the Byrons having to try to catch up due to them actually slowing down, which in earlier chapters seemed quite impossible to imagine and yet their reputation seemed to preceed them. There are also by now, new friends readers will meet and of course more highs and lows to encounter. It also takes readers to when Sophia is in Bath, the society and her troubles there. I love that the attention again goes back to the state of Newstead Abbey. It’s interesting to read what locals at the time, thought of the statues being installed there.
The Chapel not only looks at some financial and health issues, but also an incredible storm in 1787. The description, brief as it is, of what happened to part of Newstead Abbey is powerful. There is great sadness however over deaths and a dwindling generation, that is written with great sensitivity, whilst telling the facts.
The Epilogue – Cloisters is interesting and mentions Joe and his wish to be buried by Boatswain. I can tell you, because I have seen it, there is a memorial to Boatswain in the grounds, with the most beautiful poem on it. The Epilogue also provides a very well written conclusions about to those who made up the Byrons and their depth of character.
There is a beautiful, but somewhat emotional poem in the appendix.
As I finish the book, in some ways, I didn’t quite want to end it and in some ways there is an overriding sense of satisfaction and also a mysterious calm, when you do reach the end, that I had not expected. Perhaps because there is so much heartbreak and anguish within the book.
It is so well researched and written that it is in many ways, lavish, yet not unrealisitically so. It feels like Emily Brand has done this justice. It isn’t dramatic or sensational in any way. What there is however, is a sense of satisfaction and of knowing more about the Byrons than you might have done previously to reading this book.
The review can also been seen (with pictures of Newstead Abbey and the cover), on my blog - Bookmarks and Stages
It’s interesting to learn a bit more about the tragic Frances. In 1726 There was another baby born into the Byron family and such congratulations from Thorsebury Hall and Welbeck Abbey (which can still be visited too) and many more high-standing people such as the Duke of Newcastle at Clumber Park (it is a fine and lovely Nottinghamshire park. I played there as child and walked round with the tread of adult feet).
This book is about Newstead Abbey and the Byrons. It isn’t so much about the life and death of the poet Lord Byron, who we all know, but more how they came to have Newstead Abbey and about the generations of Byrons, perhaps the stories that are less familiar and less told. It is however no less interesting, scandalous and emotional. The author has also told of some of the politics of the time (thankfully not too much). As much as I may have liked to read a bit more about the Lord Byron we know more about and about Newstead Abbey, this is still a very good book. It’s perhaps more unique than that of what has been done before, because there is certainly no reason why all the Byrons shouldn’t be written about. Everything is also put into context very neatly as it also looks at a wide scope of social and political history too. It all adds interest to them and to Newstead Abbey, which is steeped in history, even from the angle Emily Brand has taken. I recommend it.
The book tells of the successes in battle out at sea and of love, as well as the tragedies and ultimately their downfall. The book takes readers, of course to Newstead Abbey itself, but also to other places around Nottinghamshire in England and up to Scotland and abroad, in what is a book so well-written that it feels so remarkably easy to read. The facts are all there, but in such a form that flows even easier than the water mentioned throughout the book. The chapters are named after parts of Newstead Abbey itself, which not only ties in the abbey, although the book also talks about other places, it also feels like this writer is respectful in doing this.
The book then moves onto time spent in London, a far cry from leafy Sherwood Forest, and its new developments and re-builds after the Great Fire of London and the coronation of a new king. There is a well-written contrast between London and the beauty and the nature within Newstead Abbey.
The education of the children is also mentioned and you can feel some of the anguish around it. You learn a great deal about the Byrons and their early life and as their lives develop, sometimes also colliding with tragic times.
The Byron’s certainly were busy as they got involved in shipping on trade and business voyages. There’s also a tragic disappearance of a ship.
Slight political elements are mentioned and this, apart from being interesting as they formed the Byron’s lives, it also firmly, but informally, places useful timelines on what was happening in the wider world too as it goes into events on the fields of Flanders and Scottish clans, as well as skirmishes and worse, that was happening in Edinburgh, Scotland and further up to Culloden, Inverness and up to Aberdeen as this was Jacobean times, before turning attentions back onto Newstead Abbey and the renovations and additions, William introduced to the exterior and interior. I like that someone said the Byron’s were good landlords. There is however, much scandal, including murder. This book really does seem to cover it all, as well as certain ways Lord Byron voted. However, it seems to be Newstead Abbey that is a love and he seems drawn back to Nottinghamshire and his visions for it.
Newstead Abbey 1
Pic of Newstead Abbey – taken by Louise – writer of this blog
The Upper Lake takes readers back to sea, documenting the life and trials there and it’s certainly rough and nothing about it is romantic. I feel the author speaks of a truth and authenticity about the realities of being out at sea.
The Great Dining Hall is back on land with George Byron at Halanby Hall, on his honeymoon as he wed Annabelle Millbanke. He seems romantic, but prone to a temper. Readers can also learn how Byron’s sister became the Countess of Carlisle and her pregnancy and of the entertainment. The writing changes tone, from that of the sea. It has a more romantic air, but each draws you in nearer and yet there always seems to be heartbreak and troubled, tortured times, in amongst the better days.
Folly’s Castle takes readers to the time Lord Byron spent there with fellow poet companions, such as Shelley. The chapter also goes into more revolutionary times and was also happening in America as New York became under British control. Again, however all is not well back at Newstead as it tells of how things were auctioned off at a nearby Mansfield auction house and back at sea was treacherous. The detail put into this, is interesting. It also looks at what was happening in France at the time, with a new Princess being born into Versailles, all the while ensuring attentions are also focussed on Newstead and the Byrons and more scandal over love affairs, this time with Amelia and Jack and their child. I get the feeling times would not have been dull, working within the properties the Byrons used, as a footman was about to find out.
This part also shows Daws in Lancashire and how his property is also somewhat failing .
The Great Gallery is fascinating about the changing fashions in music as Mozart bursts into the music scene and man is starting to conquer the skies, it alludes almost to the Byrons having to try to catch up due to them actually slowing down, which in earlier chapters seemed quite impossible to imagine and yet their reputation seemed to preceed them. There are also by now, new friends readers will meet and of course more highs and lows to encounter. It also takes readers to when Sophia is in Bath, the society and her troubles there. I love that the attention again goes back to the state of Newstead Abbey. It’s interesting to read what locals at the time, thought of the statues being installed there.
The Chapel not only looks at some financial and health issues, but also an incredible storm in 1787. The description, brief as it is, of what happened to part of Newstead Abbey is powerful. There is great sadness however over deaths and a dwindling generation, that is written with great sensitivity, whilst telling the facts.
The Epilogue – Cloisters is interesting and mentions Joe and his wish to be buried by Boatswain. I can tell you, because I have seen it, there is a memorial to Boatswain in the grounds, with the most beautiful poem on it. The Epilogue also provides a very well written conclusions about to those who made up the Byrons and their depth of character.
There is a beautiful, but somewhat emotional poem in the appendix.
As I finish the book, in some ways, I didn’t quite want to end it and in some ways there is an overriding sense of satisfaction and also a mysterious calm, when you do reach the end, that I had not expected. Perhaps because there is so much heartbreak and anguish within the book.
It is so well researched and written that it is in many ways, lavish, yet not unrealisitically so. It feels like Emily Brand has done this justice. It isn’t dramatic or sensational in any way. What there is however, is a sense of satisfaction and of knowing more about the Byrons than you might have done previously to reading this book.
The review can also been seen (with pictures of Newstead Abbey and the cover), on my blog - Bookmarks and Stages
April 13, 2024
Turns out the infamous poet Byron may have inherited a tendency towards infamy from the rogues gallery that makes up his ancestors.
April 16, 2020
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in e change for an honest review. I requested it as I'm interested in the Georgian period and the Byron family are fascinating!
This is clearly a very well researched book - it gallops along at a really significant pace moving from one incident to the next and considers all of the Byron family, not just! Lord Byron... they are a really fascinating family that due to their diversity offers a significant insight into the Georgian period both in England and abroad. In many ways it is surprisingly easy to read. The pace is good - speedy - with historical quotes and illustrations which helpfully reinforce the points made by the author. The book includes Lord Byron and his antics but also other members of his family so we get some insight into the lives of the very wealthy, but also women and the sons further down the line who have to go into work, so we get to see Georgian life in many different situations and circumstances. However, in other ways it is a difficult book to read. There is a lot of death - children especially. Also illness, disease and hunger. John's story in particular gives insight into life at sea which was so exceptionally hard. It's a miracle anyone survived. His story also gives insight into the slave trade at the time.
I think anyone interested in the Byron Family or Georgian Period generally would enjoy this book. It offers a very comprehensive window into the past which is both interesting and sad. The style of writing is excellent - it's very readable. It definately makes you think about how much easier life is today!
This is clearly a very well researched book - it gallops along at a really significant pace moving from one incident to the next and considers all of the Byron family, not just! Lord Byron... they are a really fascinating family that due to their diversity offers a significant insight into the Georgian period both in England and abroad. In many ways it is surprisingly easy to read. The pace is good - speedy - with historical quotes and illustrations which helpfully reinforce the points made by the author. The book includes Lord Byron and his antics but also other members of his family so we get some insight into the lives of the very wealthy, but also women and the sons further down the line who have to go into work, so we get to see Georgian life in many different situations and circumstances. However, in other ways it is a difficult book to read. There is a lot of death - children especially. Also illness, disease and hunger. John's story in particular gives insight into life at sea which was so exceptionally hard. It's a miracle anyone survived. His story also gives insight into the slave trade at the time.
I think anyone interested in the Byron Family or Georgian Period generally would enjoy this book. It offers a very comprehensive window into the past which is both interesting and sad. The style of writing is excellent - it's very readable. It definately makes you think about how much easier life is today!
December 17, 2019
Overall I found this to be an enjoyable book where the author depicts a completely insane family who weathers (to name just a few) accusations of murder, a sibling lost at sea for many years, a Countess with numerous flirtations and a ‘cougar marriage’ (marrying a much younger man) and later incest. Prior to reading this book I had very little knowledge about the Byron family and found that I enjoyed learning and understanding their place within English history. My own criticisms would be a lack of genogram; there was a lot of similar names that at times I felt confused as to who the author was referring to. I also would like the epilogue to focus more on the 6th Lord Byron and the future as opposed to devoting pages summarising past events. However these criticisms aside I enjoyed this book and would recommend to anyone who may have an interest in this period or with Lord Byron.
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for providing an e-copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for providing an e-copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
December 31, 2019
I found this book to be at many points too much of a good thing. There is so much information to relay and the author is obviously so passionate that the text becomes overwhelming. I understand the desire to both set the scene and also make use of what must have been staggering amounts of references but, for example in early chapters the reader is pummelled with superfluous names, so much that it becomes a difficult task keeping up with the ones that actually matter. On top of this I felt the text so choked with parentheses and quotations that it was distracting. They are a natural pause point so interrupt the momentum and when so overused did seem to ruin what could have been a more elegant flow. But the book is not the sum of these parts and after persevering I certainly learned more than I ever knew about previous generations in the Byron line, plus a bit about the infamous Lord himself. As my final book of 2019 I'm happy that it was a good one.
April 14, 2020
I found this book a real chore to read. In theory the story of the downfall of the Byrons should have been really exciting as there was murder, incest, gambling, shipwrecks... Somehow this book just struggled to hold my interest. I think one of the largest issues that I had with the book was the way that it was structured meant that we followed one sibling continuously for a long period of time before following another sibling for a long period of time. Whilst the siblings' paths did diverge at times they also converged so some events were repeated in multiple chapters; it also meant that by the time the book moved to later stages in the Bryons' lives, some key events in their lives had been forgotten. Brand uses a large quantity of contemporary quotes throughout the book which I found jarring.
I went into this book with no knowledge about any of the Bryon family history; this book may be more enjoyable to readers more familiar with their stories, looking for further depth.
I went into this book with no knowledge about any of the Bryon family history; this book may be more enjoyable to readers more familiar with their stories, looking for further depth.
February 18, 2021
This is a book that I'd been looking forward to for some time, and I have to say that it didn't disappoint.
While I appreciate some of the poet Lord Byron's work, my primary interest is in his grandfather, Foulweather Jack. The Fall Of The House of Byron is a treasure trove of information about him - I was pleased, if not surprised, to find that it didn't focus too heavily on his early adventure with Anson's fleet (I've already read his own book about that ordeal, and O'Brian's adaptation of it) - his entire life is covered with vivid, well-researched thoroughness.
Of course, I also enjoy some good historical drama for its own sake, and the story of the great poet's scandalous family certainly provides plenty of that, all of which TFotHoB delights in. From the grasping, wicked 4th Lord Byron to the debauched, womanizing Mad Jack, and the romantic, well-meaning, but deeply unwise Isabella, the story of the Byron dynasty resembles a high-budget soap opera.
The bottom line on TFotHoB is simple - if you're a devotee of the poet, this book is an essential companion to understand his origins. If you delight in scandal, tragedy, romance, and general 18th century shenanigans, it's a wonderful read. Any fan of Patrick O'Brian, George MacDonald Fraser, or Jane Austen will find themselves in familiar, comfortable, and entertaining territory here.
Do I have quibbles? A few. The first one is general - the structure of the book didn't entirely work for me. There were a LOT of people in the Byron extended family, and each of the major players got their own section, but keeping track of who's who from one section to the next wasn't always easy. Having said that, I can't honestly say that I can come up with a better way to structure the narrative - perhaps we simply have to accept that it's a convoluted topic, and that it requires very close attention.
My final quibble is so minor that I almost hate to mention it, but it's a nagging annoyance. At one point, Brand writes that William Byron apparently purchased his commission as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. That's problematic for two reasons - first, midshipman didn't hold commissions. That's an incredibly tiny error that I would overlook, except for the fact that it's followed by the suggestion that his position was purchased. That, of course, is impossible - rank in the Royal Navy couldn't be purchased.
This, however, is a pop history book, so I don't want to suggest that the author is mistaken - I think it's more likely that she just simplified a complex, and relatively insignificant, technical matter for a general audience. It's possible that Byron's family bribed a captain to appoint Byron as a midshipman rather than a servant/volunteer, which is the rank that prospective officers had to hold before becoming midshipman.
If you're not too keen on splitting hairs, that's close enough to "purchasing a commission", even though it's a private (and illegal) transaction. That scenario seems rather unlikely - given that the Navy basically ran on patronage and favours, most captains would have probably been eager to do Byron that small favour for free - but it is the most reasonable interpretation I can come up with.
Am I being overly pedantic? Quite possibly, but what else would you expect from a history buff? I mean, if you're reading a book about a poet's ancestors, you probably don't get out much.
While I appreciate some of the poet Lord Byron's work, my primary interest is in his grandfather, Foulweather Jack. The Fall Of The House of Byron is a treasure trove of information about him - I was pleased, if not surprised, to find that it didn't focus too heavily on his early adventure with Anson's fleet (I've already read his own book about that ordeal, and O'Brian's adaptation of it) - his entire life is covered with vivid, well-researched thoroughness.
Of course, I also enjoy some good historical drama for its own sake, and the story of the great poet's scandalous family certainly provides plenty of that, all of which TFotHoB delights in. From the grasping, wicked 4th Lord Byron to the debauched, womanizing Mad Jack, and the romantic, well-meaning, but deeply unwise Isabella, the story of the Byron dynasty resembles a high-budget soap opera.
The bottom line on TFotHoB is simple - if you're a devotee of the poet, this book is an essential companion to understand his origins. If you delight in scandal, tragedy, romance, and general 18th century shenanigans, it's a wonderful read. Any fan of Patrick O'Brian, George MacDonald Fraser, or Jane Austen will find themselves in familiar, comfortable, and entertaining territory here.
Do I have quibbles? A few. The first one is general - the structure of the book didn't entirely work for me. There were a LOT of people in the Byron extended family, and each of the major players got their own section, but keeping track of who's who from one section to the next wasn't always easy. Having said that, I can't honestly say that I can come up with a better way to structure the narrative - perhaps we simply have to accept that it's a convoluted topic, and that it requires very close attention.
My final quibble is so minor that I almost hate to mention it, but it's a nagging annoyance. At one point, Brand writes that William Byron apparently purchased his commission as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. That's problematic for two reasons - first, midshipman didn't hold commissions. That's an incredibly tiny error that I would overlook, except for the fact that it's followed by the suggestion that his position was purchased. That, of course, is impossible - rank in the Royal Navy couldn't be purchased.
This, however, is a pop history book, so I don't want to suggest that the author is mistaken - I think it's more likely that she just simplified a complex, and relatively insignificant, technical matter for a general audience. It's possible that Byron's family bribed a captain to appoint Byron as a midshipman rather than a servant/volunteer, which is the rank that prospective officers had to hold before becoming midshipman.
If you're not too keen on splitting hairs, that's close enough to "purchasing a commission", even though it's a private (and illegal) transaction. That scenario seems rather unlikely - given that the Navy basically ran on patronage and favours, most captains would have probably been eager to do Byron that small favour for free - but it is the most reasonable interpretation I can come up with.
Am I being overly pedantic? Quite possibly, but what else would you expect from a history buff? I mean, if you're reading a book about a poet's ancestors, you probably don't get out much.
January 15, 2020
The Fall of the House of Byron: Scandal and Seduction by Emily Brand
Publisher: John Murray Press
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Publish Date 16 April 2020
Star Rating 4.5 Stars
The Byron's of this book start three generations back from the infamous George Gordon, Lord Byron, the poet and continues down to him. Within these three generations the House of Byron, Newstead Abbey goes from being a premier house in Britain to a hollow derelict shell. However, Newstead Abbey also stands as a portrait of Dorian Grey to the fall of the family Byron. Each generation has its heroes and its villains but ultimately, they were brought up self-entitled and didn't have a healthy respect for either money or their reputation. Thus leading to a fascinating read!
Apart from the name Byron and knowing one was a scandalized poet when I began this read I did not know anything else about the family. After reading this book I've googled all of them. It's amazing that so many fascinating characters could all have lived at the same time in the one family. The 5th Baron Byron, William, oversaw the abbey to become great and also oversaw its ruin as he developed into a Scrooge-like character but without any financial sense. His sibling was Fowl Weather Jack Byron, who went missing for several of his early years in the Navy due to ship wreak and later rose to become an Admiral. His sister Isabella, put love before sense thereby destroying her name, and to make matters worse the poet's father was rumored to have had an incestuous relationship with his sister, which seems to have carried on down the line involving the poet and his stepsister. These persons are only a small part of the larger family!
I liked the author's writing style in telling the Byron's story. Some biographies you read are very dry but Brand's style is engaging and easy read. I managed to finish this book in around three sittings and I was equally shocked and amused.
Unfortunately, the Byron family suffered from what almost all families of that time suffered from, that is, the honor of naming children after relatives. This lead to a vast cast of Williams, Johns, Carolines, etc. The book became far too confusing to follow and I accept there isn't much an author can do about people's names when writing a biography. I really enjoyed this book and the confusion can be overlooked, so I gave it an additional half star to mitigate the one star it dropped due to such confusion. Final rating 4.5 stars. If you are interested in the scandalous Byron family you must read this book!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher John Murray Press for an electronic advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Publisher: John Murray Press
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Publish Date 16 April 2020
Star Rating 4.5 Stars
The Byron's of this book start three generations back from the infamous George Gordon, Lord Byron, the poet and continues down to him. Within these three generations the House of Byron, Newstead Abbey goes from being a premier house in Britain to a hollow derelict shell. However, Newstead Abbey also stands as a portrait of Dorian Grey to the fall of the family Byron. Each generation has its heroes and its villains but ultimately, they were brought up self-entitled and didn't have a healthy respect for either money or their reputation. Thus leading to a fascinating read!
Apart from the name Byron and knowing one was a scandalized poet when I began this read I did not know anything else about the family. After reading this book I've googled all of them. It's amazing that so many fascinating characters could all have lived at the same time in the one family. The 5th Baron Byron, William, oversaw the abbey to become great and also oversaw its ruin as he developed into a Scrooge-like character but without any financial sense. His sibling was Fowl Weather Jack Byron, who went missing for several of his early years in the Navy due to ship wreak and later rose to become an Admiral. His sister Isabella, put love before sense thereby destroying her name, and to make matters worse the poet's father was rumored to have had an incestuous relationship with his sister, which seems to have carried on down the line involving the poet and his stepsister. These persons are only a small part of the larger family!
I liked the author's writing style in telling the Byron's story. Some biographies you read are very dry but Brand's style is engaging and easy read. I managed to finish this book in around three sittings and I was equally shocked and amused.
Unfortunately, the Byron family suffered from what almost all families of that time suffered from, that is, the honor of naming children after relatives. This lead to a vast cast of Williams, Johns, Carolines, etc. The book became far too confusing to follow and I accept there isn't much an author can do about people's names when writing a biography. I really enjoyed this book and the confusion can be overlooked, so I gave it an additional half star to mitigate the one star it dropped due to such confusion. Final rating 4.5 stars. If you are interested in the scandalous Byron family you must read this book!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher John Murray Press for an electronic advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
July 10, 2022
It is easy to agree with the professional reviewers' comments: 'gripping', 'verve and skill', 'mesmerising', 'hauntingly beautiful', etc, etc. There is a caveat, however. I found a number of small errors, grammatical and factual, which are quite irritating.
For instance: Brand writes 'disinterested' where she possibly means 'uninterested' (3), 'crest' where she certainly means 'coat-of-arms' (5) and 'beagles' where she presumably means 'foxhounds' (115); she uses 'reverend' as a noun (193); she writes 'the HMS Falkland' (40) - (clang! you only need to think about what the letters HMS stand for to see why that is wrong); she applies an editorial '(sic)' to 18th-century spelling in some instances but not in others. I don't blame Brand; these are mistakes that anyone might make and which a good editor or proof reader would deal with. I thought perhaps John Murray have followed the modern fashion of not employing such functionaries but both copy-editor and proof reader are thanked in the Acknowledgements - black marks to both of them. 'Pedantry!', I hear you cry but language is a precision instrument and needs to be kept sharp; there is also the nagging doubt - 'if these things are wrong what else is wrong?' There seems to be some confusion about the function of naval ships, for instance; Brand writes of them doing 'business and trade' (40, 78) but presumably she means protecting or convoying the trade.
There is another issue. Brand uses a lot of imagination - absolutely nothing wrong with that; where would historical writing be without it? But the book is slightly under-referenced so it is not always clear what is pure imagination, what is imagination founded on evidence and what is known. Just one minor example: Brand says 'In recognition of his efforts in the war, John was promoted to vice admiral' (198) but that's not how promotion within flag ranks generally worked in the 18th-century Navy. Admirals were usually promoted because someone senior to them died and they shuffled up the list. The phrase about 'recognition of his efforts in the war' seems to be pure imagination but is there evidence to substantiate it?
It is a good story well told, though.
For instance: Brand writes 'disinterested' where she possibly means 'uninterested' (3), 'crest' where she certainly means 'coat-of-arms' (5) and 'beagles' where she presumably means 'foxhounds' (115); she uses 'reverend' as a noun (193); she writes 'the HMS Falkland' (40) - (clang! you only need to think about what the letters HMS stand for to see why that is wrong); she applies an editorial '(sic)' to 18th-century spelling in some instances but not in others. I don't blame Brand; these are mistakes that anyone might make and which a good editor or proof reader would deal with. I thought perhaps John Murray have followed the modern fashion of not employing such functionaries but both copy-editor and proof reader are thanked in the Acknowledgements - black marks to both of them. 'Pedantry!', I hear you cry but language is a precision instrument and needs to be kept sharp; there is also the nagging doubt - 'if these things are wrong what else is wrong?' There seems to be some confusion about the function of naval ships, for instance; Brand writes of them doing 'business and trade' (40, 78) but presumably she means protecting or convoying the trade.
There is another issue. Brand uses a lot of imagination - absolutely nothing wrong with that; where would historical writing be without it? But the book is slightly under-referenced so it is not always clear what is pure imagination, what is imagination founded on evidence and what is known. Just one minor example: Brand says 'In recognition of his efforts in the war, John was promoted to vice admiral' (198) but that's not how promotion within flag ranks generally worked in the 18th-century Navy. Admirals were usually promoted because someone senior to them died and they shuffled up the list. The phrase about 'recognition of his efforts in the war' seems to be pure imagination but is there evidence to substantiate it?
It is a good story well told, though.
April 20, 2020
Living in Nottingham and therefore knowing Newstead Abbey well, I’m always interested in books which relate to its history and the people associated with it. Although Newstead is forever welded to the sixth Baron, Byron George Gordon Barber (the infamous poet), I was interested to learn more about the people who had inhabited in ti or were associated with the place and put their world in context.
The Fall of the House of Byron begins with the arrival of young George and his determined mother to a less than pristine Newstead Abbey, then slips back into the past and his ancestors.
Reading about their many escapades and adventures, brought the expression of “the apple not falling far from the tree” to mind. That Lord Byron of literary renown was considered to be “mad, bad and dangerous to know” seems to align well with the activities of his forebears.
But The Fall of the House of Byron is far from a sensationalist take on the family and more a well-researched, interesting and detailed read which lends itself more to an academic text than a “bodice-ripping” expose of a family who clearly knew how to live life to the full.
Prepare yourself with a pen and paper before you begin to read, as well as the ability to use the internet. The timeline does move around backwards and forwards, which can make it a little bit confusing if you’re not paying attention. That the nobility had the tendency to name their children after themselves leads to quite a few people of the same name cropping up in the different generations.
The sheer volume of information will require a halt to the reading to put the book to once side, think about it and then come back to it again after consulting your notes and Google to get the timeline and family tree straight.
For anyone wanting a thorough insight into the mores of the upper classes in the eighteenth century and their relationship to the world at large, The Fall of the House of Byron is an excellent book to delve into and a useful work of reference.
The Fall of the House of Byron was courtesy John Murray
The Fall of the House of Byron begins with the arrival of young George and his determined mother to a less than pristine Newstead Abbey, then slips back into the past and his ancestors.
Reading about their many escapades and adventures, brought the expression of “the apple not falling far from the tree” to mind. That Lord Byron of literary renown was considered to be “mad, bad and dangerous to know” seems to align well with the activities of his forebears.
But The Fall of the House of Byron is far from a sensationalist take on the family and more a well-researched, interesting and detailed read which lends itself more to an academic text than a “bodice-ripping” expose of a family who clearly knew how to live life to the full.
Prepare yourself with a pen and paper before you begin to read, as well as the ability to use the internet. The timeline does move around backwards and forwards, which can make it a little bit confusing if you’re not paying attention. That the nobility had the tendency to name their children after themselves leads to quite a few people of the same name cropping up in the different generations.
The sheer volume of information will require a halt to the reading to put the book to once side, think about it and then come back to it again after consulting your notes and Google to get the timeline and family tree straight.
For anyone wanting a thorough insight into the mores of the upper classes in the eighteenth century and their relationship to the world at large, The Fall of the House of Byron is an excellent book to delve into and a useful work of reference.
The Fall of the House of Byron was courtesy John Murray
April 12, 2020
The debonair Lord Byron (6th) is infamous as the romantic poet who was “mad, bad and dangerous to know” so we could be forgiven for thinking that he was an enigmatic anomaly in his noble family. With this lively ancestral memoir Emily Brand demonstrates that young George Gordon Byron was a juicy apple that didn’t fall far from a rather fruitful tree. It turns out that the fecund Byron clan had been causing raised eyebrows, fluttered fans, snide asides and thinly veiled gossip column accusations for decades before Gorgeous George set hearts a quiver.
Apparently, Emily Brand became interested in the Byron family after being drawn to an enigmatic Gainsborough portrait of Lord George Gordon Byron’s great-aunt Isabella, Lady Carlisle. Having read her biography of this remarkable family I can understand why it was Isabella who sparked such a flame of curiosity in a modern writer. Isabella appears to be a woman who was born in the wrong era but was judged by the strict values of her time. Whilst reading about her you alternate between wishing she would invite you to one of her parties and feeling sorry for her (often self-made) problems.
For many generations before the late 18th Century The Byrons had been famous for military courage and sensual exploits; this delightful chronicle introduces the reader to the activities of the two ill-famed generations preceding the only Byron of which most of us have actually heard. This account details star-crossed sea captains, dreamy dowagers, louche lords and spurned spouses. Not to mention more nods to incest than the average reader wants to acknowldege. Imagine a soap-opera script-written by Daniel Defoe or a reality TV show (Keeping up with The Byrons) produced by Thackery and you have some idea of what this extraordinary family had to offer.
Thank you to NetGalley and to the publishers for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
Apparently, Emily Brand became interested in the Byron family after being drawn to an enigmatic Gainsborough portrait of Lord George Gordon Byron’s great-aunt Isabella, Lady Carlisle. Having read her biography of this remarkable family I can understand why it was Isabella who sparked such a flame of curiosity in a modern writer. Isabella appears to be a woman who was born in the wrong era but was judged by the strict values of her time. Whilst reading about her you alternate between wishing she would invite you to one of her parties and feeling sorry for her (often self-made) problems.
For many generations before the late 18th Century The Byrons had been famous for military courage and sensual exploits; this delightful chronicle introduces the reader to the activities of the two ill-famed generations preceding the only Byron of which most of us have actually heard. This account details star-crossed sea captains, dreamy dowagers, louche lords and spurned spouses. Not to mention more nods to incest than the average reader wants to acknowldege. Imagine a soap-opera script-written by Daniel Defoe or a reality TV show (Keeping up with The Byrons) produced by Thackery and you have some idea of what this extraordinary family had to offer.
Thank you to NetGalley and to the publishers for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
May 2, 2020
Holy shit, these guys were wild! I wasn’t sure I’d be able to read a whole non-fiction history book all the way through. I thought I’d be dipping in and out of it like a research text. I was wrong!
This book is compulsively readable and is hugely narrative with its tales of fallen aristocracy. You feel like you’re reading a dramatic fictional family saga - except it’s all true. I couldn’t escape from the dramas and the fights of the wider Byron family. There’s murder, shipwrecks, affairs, elopements and a large crumbling manor (Newstead Abbey). Brand truly brings these characters back to life with the heart of a writer and the precision of an historian.
Byron the poet is only on the periphery of this story. We learn about his childhood and were given snippets of his adulthood through his relationship with his ancestral home. The majority of the book explores those that came before him, including Foulweather Jack and Bad Jack Byron (these guys loved a nickname based on their infamy). One particularly interesting character in the family is Isabella, Countess Dowager of Carlisle. Isabella led a very rebellious life for the time, refusing to settle down in the way many would expect. After she was widowed, she married an extremely young man. They eventually separated, and she swanned around France taking on secret boyfriends and throwing parties. She wrote wonderful poetry and eventually published a book for young women: ‘Thoughts in the form of maxims addressed to young ladies, on their first establishment in the world’ which I’m now desperate to read.
This is a definite five star read for me and I can tell it’s going to influence my future reading. I want to dive deeper into history now and it’s all thanks to Emily Brand and her Byrons.
This book is compulsively readable and is hugely narrative with its tales of fallen aristocracy. You feel like you’re reading a dramatic fictional family saga - except it’s all true. I couldn’t escape from the dramas and the fights of the wider Byron family. There’s murder, shipwrecks, affairs, elopements and a large crumbling manor (Newstead Abbey). Brand truly brings these characters back to life with the heart of a writer and the precision of an historian.
Byron the poet is only on the periphery of this story. We learn about his childhood and were given snippets of his adulthood through his relationship with his ancestral home. The majority of the book explores those that came before him, including Foulweather Jack and Bad Jack Byron (these guys loved a nickname based on their infamy). One particularly interesting character in the family is Isabella, Countess Dowager of Carlisle. Isabella led a very rebellious life for the time, refusing to settle down in the way many would expect. After she was widowed, she married an extremely young man. They eventually separated, and she swanned around France taking on secret boyfriends and throwing parties. She wrote wonderful poetry and eventually published a book for young women: ‘Thoughts in the form of maxims addressed to young ladies, on their first establishment in the world’ which I’m now desperate to read.
This is a definite five star read for me and I can tell it’s going to influence my future reading. I want to dive deeper into history now and it’s all thanks to Emily Brand and her Byrons.
December 15, 2019
The Fall of the House of Byron is a portrait of the lives of the Byron family in the eighteenth century, leading up to the point at which the famous poet inherits the title Lord Byron at the age of ten. From the 4th Baron Byron William at Newstead Abbey at the start of the century to his son William, the 'Wicked Lord', dying at the end of it, the book follows marriage, scandal, murder, and war through generations of siblings and cousins as the Byrons lose reputation and money amidst the backdrop of the events of the century.
The cover and title of the book set it up as a different way of looking at Lord Byron, venturing deep into the lives of his ancestors and using him only as a framing device and focus point. Due to this, the book gets most interesting when focusing on the figures you know are going to be important in relation to the poet—particularly his father Jack—and in the inevitability of who has to die for him to end up inheriting the title. The book seems comprehensive and provides insight into interpersonal relationships and scandal in the Georgian period, but particularly near the start (when there's less scandal) it can feel a bit like a lot of facts about when people are born or marry.
Perhaps less scandalous than could be expected for anyone who has read about Byron himself, this is a detailed account of how a family fell in various ways across a century. Though not a surprise to those interested in Byron (who are presumably the target audience of the book), it shows that he didn't just come from a straightforward aristocratic family, but one full of the scandal he was known for and who didn't have the money or reputation they once had.
The cover and title of the book set it up as a different way of looking at Lord Byron, venturing deep into the lives of his ancestors and using him only as a framing device and focus point. Due to this, the book gets most interesting when focusing on the figures you know are going to be important in relation to the poet—particularly his father Jack—and in the inevitability of who has to die for him to end up inheriting the title. The book seems comprehensive and provides insight into interpersonal relationships and scandal in the Georgian period, but particularly near the start (when there's less scandal) it can feel a bit like a lot of facts about when people are born or marry.
Perhaps less scandalous than could be expected for anyone who has read about Byron himself, this is a detailed account of how a family fell in various ways across a century. Though not a surprise to those interested in Byron (who are presumably the target audience of the book), it shows that he didn't just come from a straightforward aristocratic family, but one full of the scandal he was known for and who didn't have the money or reputation they once had.
March 9, 2020
I really enjoyed this well-researched history of the Byron family, it’s scandals and triumphs, it’s goodies and baddies - and there are a lot of baddies. The poet Byron was blessed with the moniker ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ but his antecedents were far worse in many ways.
The author gives a huge amount of detail on the history of Britain, its politics and wars, its social norms and petty squabbles, the indolent lifestyles of the rich and the gossipy nature of the Beau Monde. Legal arguments over inheritances and overspending feature highly in the lives of the Byrons as do murder charges, incest, court cases, elopement, seduction, living beyond their means and dynastic marriages.
The poet Byron unexpectedly inherits his grandfather’s estate as a small child only to find that his stately home and ancestral name are more of a burden than a gift. And so his career begins and his bad reputation is almost sealed before he begins on life. His ancestors’ misdemeanours precede him and he cannot shake them off.
There are a lot of characters involved in this story and some of them have the same or similar names ; so it is not always easy to keep track. But stick with it; the effort is worth it in my opinion.
A great read and one which sheds a lot of light on the background to Byron’s reputation.
Thanks to netGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC of this book.
The author gives a huge amount of detail on the history of Britain, its politics and wars, its social norms and petty squabbles, the indolent lifestyles of the rich and the gossipy nature of the Beau Monde. Legal arguments over inheritances and overspending feature highly in the lives of the Byrons as do murder charges, incest, court cases, elopement, seduction, living beyond their means and dynastic marriages.
The poet Byron unexpectedly inherits his grandfather’s estate as a small child only to find that his stately home and ancestral name are more of a burden than a gift. And so his career begins and his bad reputation is almost sealed before he begins on life. His ancestors’ misdemeanours precede him and he cannot shake them off.
There are a lot of characters involved in this story and some of them have the same or similar names ; so it is not always easy to keep track. But stick with it; the effort is worth it in my opinion.
A great read and one which sheds a lot of light on the background to Byron’s reputation.
Thanks to netGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC of this book.
June 5, 2020
This book examines the lives of three generations of Byrons, examining a family plagued by scandal and drama.
The first half of this book immediately draws you in with characters that seem too large and outlandish to ever have existed in real life. We have John Byron, a naval captain whose thrilling adventures at sea included a near-fatal shipwreck on an uninhabited island, and Isabelle Byron, whose decision to court a man more than a decade younger than her would forever cast her as a laughing stock. The Byrons were almost ridiculous in their ability to create trouble wherever they went, and if you don’t know what’s coming it’s thrilling waiting to see what they could possibly get up to next.
Brand’s vivid and exciting style of writing introduces you to the Byrons’ world of candlelit ballrooms, perilous journeys by sea, the shadowy interiors of gentlemen’s clubs and grand country manors. Her descriptions of Newstead Abbey are particularly beautiful, as decorated with gothic flourishes as the house itself.
It’s a shame the book loses its clarity and pace in the second half. As the Byron family expands it becomes difficult to keep track of who’s who, and what relation they are to each other. The fact that Brand moves backwards and forwards in time only adds to this confusion.
However, I did enjoy this biography, particularly Brand’s style of writing, and wouldn’t hesitate to pick up anything she writes in the future.
The first half of this book immediately draws you in with characters that seem too large and outlandish to ever have existed in real life. We have John Byron, a naval captain whose thrilling adventures at sea included a near-fatal shipwreck on an uninhabited island, and Isabelle Byron, whose decision to court a man more than a decade younger than her would forever cast her as a laughing stock. The Byrons were almost ridiculous in their ability to create trouble wherever they went, and if you don’t know what’s coming it’s thrilling waiting to see what they could possibly get up to next.
Brand’s vivid and exciting style of writing introduces you to the Byrons’ world of candlelit ballrooms, perilous journeys by sea, the shadowy interiors of gentlemen’s clubs and grand country manors. Her descriptions of Newstead Abbey are particularly beautiful, as decorated with gothic flourishes as the house itself.
It’s a shame the book loses its clarity and pace in the second half. As the Byron family expands it becomes difficult to keep track of who’s who, and what relation they are to each other. The fact that Brand moves backwards and forwards in time only adds to this confusion.
However, I did enjoy this biography, particularly Brand’s style of writing, and wouldn’t hesitate to pick up anything she writes in the future.
January 26, 2020
The Fall of the House of Byron is a lavishly researched, deeply evocative, and substantial biography of the house of Byron, into which George Gordon — later known as Lord Byron, the poet and traveller — is born. I’ve had a fascination with Lord Byron since my university days, and back then I read Fiona MacCarthy’s Byron: Life and Legend, which I rather enjoyed. The Fall of the House of Byron is, in contrast, much broader in scope in that it covers the family itself, from his ancestors three generations back to Lord Byron’s own life.
This was a fascinating and easy read, if a little dry in places, but on the whole entertaining. It is, of course, rather scandalous given the family at its centre, and if your interest lies with the inter-generational politics and scandal that preceded Lord Byron himself, then this is a worthy addition to your reading list. However, if your interest is more in the man himself, that is George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, whose poetry and exploits still rivet us to this day, then you may be disappointed as he is less present than perhaps a reader would like. After all, though, this book is about his family and the circumstances which lead him to inherit Newstead Abbey. Recommended.
I received an e-ARC from the publisher, John Murray Press, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This was a fascinating and easy read, if a little dry in places, but on the whole entertaining. It is, of course, rather scandalous given the family at its centre, and if your interest lies with the inter-generational politics and scandal that preceded Lord Byron himself, then this is a worthy addition to your reading list. However, if your interest is more in the man himself, that is George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, whose poetry and exploits still rivet us to this day, then you may be disappointed as he is less present than perhaps a reader would like. After all, though, this book is about his family and the circumstances which lead him to inherit Newstead Abbey. Recommended.
I received an e-ARC from the publisher, John Murray Press, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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