title: Byron: Life and Legend
author:  Fiona MacCarthy 
description: While biographies of Byron have appeared with regularity since his death in 1824 at age 36, British author MacCarthy's (William Morris: A Life for Our Time) engrossing, coolly perceptive study of the Romantic poet is notable for its refusal to swoon over Byron's legend while still attuned to the evolution of his powerful personality and its impact on the world of art and literature. She notes how Byron went from being a mediocre student mocked by other boys to a charismatic leader of his peers and an extraordinarily well-read young man (though he read in secret, "to keep up his pose of anti-authoritarian idler"). She discusses how carefully he had to suppress his homosexual impulses in an increasingly conservative England, and how crucial his 1809-1810 travels in Greece and Turkey were to not only Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, but to his own life. The familiar arc of his fame covers an abortive career in English politics and a disastrous marriage (rent with rumors of incest with his half-sister), and the years of his exile in Switzerland, Italy and Greece, during which, MacCarthy argues, he introduced England to Europe and vice versa. She considers his poetry; his influence on English and European writers from Victor Hugo to Charlotte Bront; and the cult of Byron that developed after his death. If her dispassionate approach succeeds more in describing his fascinating, contradictory character than penetrating his psychology, she nonetheless gracefully shows how the "life" and "legend" of the subtitle fed off each other. <br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: **“How do you know my father?” Fiona’s voice sounded as raw as it felt.**
  
  “I don’t. I never met him until this day, although I grew up hearing tales
  about him and my father. And I know who you are, Fiona O’Rourke.”
  
    
  
  A terrible roaring filled her ears, louder than the blizzard’s wail, louder
  than any sound she had ever known. The force of it trembled through her, and
  she felt as if a lasso were tightening around her neck. Her dreams cracked
  apart like breaking ice. “Y-you know me?”
  
    
  
  “Aye.” Gently came that single word.
  
    
  
  “But how? Unless you are—” Her tongue froze, her mind rolled around uselessly
  because she knew exactly who he was. For she had grown up hearing those same
  tales of her da and another man, the man whose son now towered before her.
  “No, it can’t be.”
  
    
  
  “Ian McPherson. Your betrothed.”
  
   **Books by Jillian Hart**
  
  Love Inspired Historical
  
   _ _*__ _Homespun Bride_
  
   _ _*__ _High Country Bride_
  
   _In a Mother’s Arms_  
  “Finally a Family”
  
   _**_ _Gingham Bride