Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781108033930)

When the Countess of Blessington (1789-1849) met the poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) in Genoa in 1823 she noted that 'the impression of the first few minutes disappointed me'. Despite this precarious start, they struck up a friendship and met nearly every day for two months. Byron had been living in the Italian port city since the previous autumn and Blessington and her family had arrived in April 1823. Her account of their conversations was not published until 1834, a decade after Byron's death. Blessington expresses candid opinions about the poet in this work, writing that Byron 'is a strange mélange of good and evil, the predominancy of either depending wholly on the humour he may happen to be in'. Through her frankness, the author - herself a well-known writer who hosted a distinguished literary salon - also reveals much about herself and the literary world she and Byron inhabited.

Author: Marguerite Blessington
ISBN-10: 1108033938
ISBN-13: 9781108033930
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/27/2011
Pages: 420
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.93d