Passion – Jude Morgan
As this one was lent to me, I felt compelled to read it quickly rather than letting it languish in the TBR pile. It is long – 663 pages – and slowed my reading. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it – there was just a lot of it.
Here’s the blurb …
They were the Romantic generation, famous and infamous, and in their short, extraordinary lives, they left a legacy of glamorous and often shocking legend. In PASSION the interwoven lives and vivid personalities of Byron, Shelley and Keats are explored through the eyes of the women who knew and loved them – scandalously, intensely and sometimes tragically.
From the salons of the Whig nobles and the penury and vitality of Grub Street, to the beauty and corruption of Venice and the carrion field of Waterloo, PASSION presents the Romantic generation in a new and dramatic light – actors in a stormy history that unleashed the energies of the modern world.
What I liked most about this novel was learning about the lives of the women involved with these men: Caroline Lamb, Annabella Milbanke, Augusta Leigh (Byron’s half-sister), Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Fanny Brawne.
I notices some sentences taken directly from Austen
Annabella Milbanke, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Replace Annabella Milbanke with Emma Woodhouse and you have the opening paragraph of Emma. There are probably other (contemporary) authors also used, but I am not clever enough to notice them.
If you are interested in the romantic poets, then I think this book will interest you.
Another review…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/nov/13/featuresreviews.guardianreview22