Lord Byron's wife of one year, Lady Byron has often been portrayed as a pious and insensitive woman who didn't deserve him. In Lady Byron and Her Daughters, biographer and novelist Julia Markus (Dared and Done) mounts a strong defense of the lady's character and accomplishments.
She was attracted to Lord Byron's brilliance, beauty and "friendlessness." She later wrote: "I did not pause--there was my error--to enquire why he was friendless." She became "the very good girl determined to save the very bad man." But Byron was beyond reform, driven by shame and anger over his clubfoot, bisexuality and childhood sexual abuse, and fresh from an affair with his half-sister, Augusta, that produced a daughter, Medora. The Byrons had a traumatic marriage, undermined by his relationship with Augusta, swinging between sexual reconciliations and his increasingly violent rages that made Lady Byron question his sanity. After the birth of their daughter, Ada, he told her to leave, and she won a formal separation. Public opinion sided with her at the time, but his version of events eventually won out, in part because Lady Byron never told her story in public. Independent and wealthy, she became a progressive activist against slavery and for working-class education reform.
Lady Byron attempted a memoir, but never finished it. Her grandson wrote a biography based on her papers, but printed only 200 copies. Harriet Beecher Stowe championed her in another book that never got much attention. Markus tells her story with strong feeling and a novelist's skill, and her facts are well documented. Lady Byron may finally have some vindication here. --Sara Catterall