Sunday, March 28, 2010

Breaking News: Clarie Clairmont Memoir Recently Discovered--Disses Shelley and Byron!

The following article, from the Daily Mail (UK) discusses a forgotten memoir recently discovered by Claire Clairmont, written in her 70's.  In the work she blasts both Byron and Shelley as "monsters," and sheds new light on the relationship between the group in the fateful year of 1818.  Read more! 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261350/Lord-Byron-described-free-love-worshipper-monster-ex-lover-newly-discovered-memoir.html
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1 comment:

  1. Patricia Scott-AndersonMarch 29, 2010 at 10:04 AM

    What an awesome find and story! I thought it rather.. shallow, that some of the comments after the article were so droll and gave little thought to the 'what if's' of what Miss Clairmont was speaking of.

    For example--for Lord Byron to wonder if Allegra was his child, means that he admitted it was possible, but was also saying that Miss Clairmont was a bit of a "get around" herself! Her writing then, could be viewed from the 'jilted lover' perspective.

    I am very curious as to the connection to the Shelley's however. Clairmont went with them on their romantic elopment into the wedded life and then lived with them for years. I'm thinking that this was more than just a rent share situation--it definitely sounds more like a menage a' trois. Which of course, again.. would set Clairmont into the potential jilted lover column--meaning her words could have been spiteful, malicious and designed to incite even MORE of an outcry from British society against these writers (Byron, I believe.. was banned from returning to Britian wasn't he?)

    In any case.. how I WISH I could have been a fly on the wall when the relationships were occuring and when the Clairmont letter was written!

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