Tag: Romantic poets

Clairmont by Lesley McDowell

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I have read several novels about the Romantic poets and their social circle, including Jude Morgan’s Passion and Guinevere Glasfurd’s The Year Without Summer, but Claire Clairmont has always seemed a shadowy character, who hasn’t come to life as strongly as other women such as Mary Shelley or Lady Caroline Lamb. This new novel by Lesley McDowell changes that by giving Claire a voice and placing her at the forefront of her own story.

Clairmont follows Claire throughout three different periods of her life, beginning in 1816 when she accompanies her stepsister Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) to Geneva. Claire, Mary and Mary’s married lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom she already has a baby son, are renting a house by the lake, while Shelley’s friend Lord Byron is staying at the nearby Villa Diodati with his doctor, John Polidori. Claire is pregnant with Byron’s child, but it’s becoming clear that he now views her as an inconvenience and would prefer it if the child was never born.

The Geneva episode taking place in 1816, the ‘year without a summer’ which followed a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, is the part of Claire’s life most people will be familiar with (if they’re familiar with her at all). It was during their stay at the Villa Diodati that Mary began to write her famous novel Frankenstein, and it’s through her own relationships with Byron and the Shelleys that Claire has gained historical significance. In addition, this novel also follows Claire during her time working as a governess in Russia in 1825 and later when she settles in Paris in the 1840s, and we gradually begin to see how those events of 1816 have impacted the rest of her life.

There were things that I liked about this book and things that I didn’t (more of the latter than the former, unfortunately). To start with a positive, I appreciated having the opportunity to learn more about Claire Clairmont, having previously known very little about her beyond her involvement with the Romantic poets. I had no idea what she did or where she went later in life, so I found that interesting. The story is not told in chronological order, but moves back and forth in time, with a Russia chapter followed by a Paris one then back to Geneva again, which I thought was quite confusing, particularly as the gaps between the timelines aren’t adequately filled in and no backstory is given for the characters prior to 1816. It felt as though half of the story was missing and it made it difficult to become fully immersed.

The writing is beautiful and dreamlike and at times reminded me of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (especially since, like the O’Farrell novel where Shakespeare is never referred to by name, here Byron is always referred to by his nickname, Albe, and never Byron). However, sometimes beautiful writing isn’t enough and I didn’t get on very well with Hamnet so maybe it’s not surprising that I didn’t get on with this book either. The constant jumping around in time and the vagueness of the plot made it hard for me to really get to know Claire and understand her actions. Although I had a lot of sympathy for her because of the terrible way Byron treated her during and after her pregnancy (which has been well documented, including in his own letters), I had no idea what attracted her to him in the first place or how their relationship had reached this point, because none of that is explained or touched upon. Throughout the book, we are continually being dropped into situations that don’t make much sense without being given the full context.

Don’t let me put you off this book if you want to try it – there are plenty of other books I didn’t care for that other people have loved! This will probably be a good read for the right reader; it just wasn’t for me.

Thanks to Headline for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 7/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

She reads poetry…Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1802

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Lyrical Ballads 1798 - 1802

It is an ancyent Marinere,
And he stoppeth one of three:
“By thy long grey beard and thy glittering eye
Now wherefore stoppest me?”

I’m not someone who reads a lot of poetry but that’s something I would like to change, so I was pleased to have the opportunity to try this new Oxford World’s Classics edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798. This book contains both the original 1798 version and the revised, expanded one from 1802, together with their prefaces and appendices. There’s also an extensive introduction, chronology and notes, though I didn’t personally find the notes particularly helpful – and they were sometimes a distraction when I would have preferred to just concentrate on reading the poem.

From the point of view of a casual reader of poetry I don’t think it was really necessary to have both the 1798 and 1802 versions together in one book. I would have been happy with just the second one, as it seems to include all the poems from the first edition (though in a slightly different order) as well as a large number of new poems. For students of Romantic poetry, though, it will probably be useful to be able to compare the earlier edition with the later one and see how each was originally presented (any significant changes to wording etc are mentioned in the notes).

The only poem in this collection that I was already familiar with was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. It’s here in two different versions; in the 1802 one the language has been ‘modernised’, replacing some of the archaic spellings used in the original. I’ve liked this poem since the first time I read it at school and it really stands out among the other poems in the book as something special and unique. There are only a few other poems by Coleridge in Lyrical Ballads and the overwhelming majority are by Wordsworth; the most famous of Wordsworth’s is probably Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey. I’ve never thought Wordsworth would be a poet that I would like, but there are quite a few of his poems here that I enjoyed, including Goody Blake and Harry Gill, We Are Seven and The Thorn, all of which appear in both volumes, and in the 1802 collection I also liked his anti-hunting poem, Hart-Leap Well.

Whether or not you like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it can’t be denied that their Lyrical Ballads was an important work with an influence on both the Romantic Movement and the development of poetry in general. While there were only a few poems in this book that I thought had any real brilliance, I did enjoy reading most of them and found them all easy enough to read even for someone like myself who isn’t really a fan of poetry. The idea behind Lyrical Ballads was to make poetry accessible to the average person by using simple language that could be understood by everyone, so in this respect I think it was a success.

As this Oxford World’s Classics edition is quite academic it would probably be a good choice for students of Romanticism but I think for the general reader like myself it might be better to look for a collection of the most popular works of Wordsworth or Coleridge.

Passion by Jude Morgan

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Passion is a historical fiction novel which tells the story of four women and their relationships with the Romantic poets, Byron, Shelley and Keats. There’s Lady Caroline Lamb, a married woman who has an affair with Lord Byron, and Augusta Leigh, his half-sister who also becomes his lover. Then there’s Mary Godwin, future wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and author of Frankenstein, and finally, Fanny Brawne, John Keats’ fiancée. This long and ambitious book takes us through the lives of all of these characters, describing the passionate and unconventional relationships that scandalised the public during the early years of the 19th century.

Although the book concentrates on the four women I’ve already mentioned, there are several other women who also play an important part in the story. One of these is the writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary Shelley’s mother) and in the prologue we learn a lot about her life and death. We also meet Byron’s wife, Annabella Milbanke, and Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, who becomes involved with both Byron and Shelley. All of the female characters in the book are portrayed as interesting and complex people in their own right, not just because of the men they loved.

As well as providing information on the historical and political background of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Morgan also shows exactly what it was like to be a woman living during those times. It was this attention to detail that made me really believe in the story. And he takes us right inside the minds of Mary, Caroline, Augusta and Fanny, imagining what they might have thought and how they might have felt. I thought the characterisation of Lady Caroline Lamb, with her excitable, emotional personality was particularly well done. I also enjoyed reading about Augusta Leigh’s relationship with her half-brother, Byron – the dialogue between them felt completely believable and the scenes where the two of them were together were some of my favourite parts of the book.

At over 600 pages long and with its variety of narrative styles and techniques this is not the easiest of books to read. The story is told from several different perspectives, there are shifts from past to present tense, and from the third person to first person, sometimes with the characters (particularly Caroline) talking directly to the reader. I had an idea of what to expect as I recently read one of Jude Morgan’s other books, The Taste of Sorrow, and although his writing style does take a while to get used to, I really like it.

Of the three poets, Byron comes across as the most charismatic and colourful character, which I expect was also true in real life, but Shelley was fascinating to read about too. He had such interesting ideas about vegetarianism, religion and marriage. Keats, however, doesn’t appear until near the end of the book and although he and Fanny Brawne do take more of a central role in the final chapters, the focus is definitely on the other characters. Keats’ and Fanny’s story felt disconnected from the others and this is the one thing that disappointed me about the book. I do understand though that Keats was slightly younger than Byron and Shelley and their paths didn’t really cross until later, so maybe it would have been difficult to incorporate him into the earlier parts of the book.

The last few chapters are very sad, with one tragedy and death following another. The scenes towards the end of the book which take place in Keats’ house at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome were particularly poignant as I had visited the house a few years ago and so could picture his final days very vividly. (I would highly recommend visiting the Keats-Shelley House to anyone thinking of going to Rome, by the way.)

Although Morgan’s book about the Brontës, The Taste of Sorrow, had more personal appeal for me because I’m more interested in the Brontës than I am in the Romantic poets, I thought this book was equally impressive. Now that I’ve read it and know a lot more about Byron, Shelley and Keats, maybe I should have another attempt at actually reading their poetry!