Lady Caroline Lamb , among Lord Byron's many lovers, stands out - vilified, portrayed as a self-destructive nymphomaniac - her true story has never been told. Now, Paul Douglass provides the first unbiased treatment of a woman whose passions and independence were incompatible with the age in which she lived. Taking into account a traumatic childhood, Douglass explores Lamb's so-called 'erotomania' and tendency towards drug abuse and madness - problems she and Byron had in common. In this portrait, she emerges as a person who sacrificed much for the welfare of a sick child, and became an artist in her own right. Douglass illuminates her novels and poetry, her literary friendships, and the lifelong support of her husband and her publisher, John Murray.

Lady Caroline Lamb was described by her lover, Lord Byron, as having a heart like a "little volcano" and as "the cleverest most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous fascinating little being that lives now or ought to have lived 2000 years ago." She wrote witty and revealing letters to fellow writers like Lady Morgan, William Godwin, Robert Malthus, and Amelia Opie, and to her publishers John Murray and Henry Colburn, to her cousins Hart, Georgiana, and Harrio, as well as to her mother, husband, son, and lovers. In those letters, she told her correspondents "the whole disgraceful truth" of her drug and alcohol addictions, her affairs with Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster, Lord Byron, and Michael Bruce, and her jealousy of her cousin Georgiana (whom William Lamb had "adored" before proposing to Caroline). She also revealed her efforts to make a happy life for her mentally retarded, epileptic son, Augustus, and her determination to become a respected writer of fiction and poetry.

Lover of George, the Prince of Wales and mother of Queen Victoria's favourite prime minister, Viscountess Melbourne was the most important hostess of the Regency period. It was entirely in character that on her deathbed Elizabeth urged her daughter Emily to be faithful, not to her husband - but to her lover!

This book examines the relationship between Lord Byron's life and work, and the Regency culture of scandal.

Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister of England from 1834-1841. As mentor and father-figure to the young Queen Victoria, he exerted considerable influence over the first few years of her reign. In this, the first biography in twenty years, Leslie Mitchell uses the Melbourne family papers to explore the man behind the politician at the heart of early Victorian politics.

"How long it’s taken for these two mad, bad and dangerous writers to get together!" —Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle Acclaimed biographer of James Joyce, Edna O’Brien has written a "jaunty" (The New Yorker) biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic pleasures of Greece and Turkey, culminating in his meteoric rise to fame at the age of twenty-four. With "a novelist’s understanding of tempo and characterization" (Miami Herald), O’Brien captures the spirit of the man and creates an indelible portrait that explodes the Romantic myth. Byron, as brilliantly rendered by O’Brien, is the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, and defiantly immortal.