The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons - Hardcover

Crane, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375406484 ISBN 13: 9780375406485

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2002

Synopsis

An original account, revolutionary in technique, examining the character of the great Romantic poet Lord Byron through the lives and deadly rivalry of the two women he left behind.
The heart of David Crane's account is the lifelong feud between Augusta - Byron's half sister with whom he had a passionate affair - and Annabella, his society wife, both of whom bore him daughters. Crane reimagines the famous meeting between the two women years after Byron's death, a chillingly dramatic scene through which he explores the emotional and sexual truths that lay at the center of these tragic relationships. In the encounter between the two women - one in chronic ill health, the other dying - we have the ultimate display of their mutual obsession with the memory and compulsive influence of Byron that makes their story that of the Romantic Age itself.
It is a story full of dubious motives, especially Annabella's "saving" of Augusta and her child, Medora, and her twisted revenge on them both. And as the curses of incest and abuse play themselves out in the fates of Byron's daughters, we see their lives assuming the shape of Greek tragedy.
In the meeting of the two women and the consequences of their battle, Crane shows us the Romantic Age in its terrible collision with the new world of the Victorians. The Kindness of Sisters establishes Crane as a biographer of formidable gifts.

About this title

Review:

‘In Lord Byron’s Jackal, David Crane brings Edward Trelawny – seaman, scoundrel, friend of Byron and Shelley startlingly to life. Here is a wonderful adventure story about a man who invented himself in the image of the Byronic hero and lived to the hilt the final passionate and violent flowering of Romanticism in the cause of Greek independence.’
STELLA TILLYARD

‘Fascinating and oddly disturbing, Crane vividly evokes the horror of a revolution in which both sides were equally brutal. His is a complex book, but as a narrative of mingled fraud and genius it is altogether convincing.’
Jan Morris, Independent

From the Back Cover:

A groundbreaking work of Romantic biography – David Crane's book in an important and original examination of Byron, revolutionary in its technique.

The great Romantic poet, Lord Byron, left a trail of scandal and destruction in his wake. David Crane's genius is to examine Byron's legacy through the worlds and lives of the women he left behind. At the book's heart is the lifelong feud between Augusta – Byron's half-sister with whom he had a passionate affair – and Annabella, his society wife. Crane reconstructs a meeting between the two women years after Byron's death through which he explores the emotional and sexual truth and human vulnerability which lie at the heart of the Byron story.

'The Kindness of Sisters' is a story full of dubious motives, none more so that in Annabella's 'saving' of Augusta and her child Medora, and her twisted revenge on them both. David Crane's book re-established the compulsive drama of this story. And, in the mere presence of two elderly women – the one frail from chronic ill health, the other dying – we have the ultimate proof of the obsession with the memory and influence of Byron that makes their story, the story of the age itself.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375406484
• ISBN 13: 9780375406485
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290