Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

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Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: The Life of Lady Caroline Lamb

A Biography by Seán Manchester.

Of all the affairs that shook an epoch notorious for its scandals there was none more tempestuous than the liaison between Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron. There can be little astonishment, then, why the subject of Lady Caroline Lamb continues to fascinate. Seán Manchester’s unique biography sheds much light on a life that, together with Lord Byron’s, dazzled and dismayed London’s high society at the height of the Romantic Age in nineteenth century England. Gothic Press is, therefore, delighted to make available a quality hardcover edition of this splendid work, illustrated throughout – including many portraits of Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb – that, by individual request, will be signed and dedicated by the author who is directly related to Lord Byron owing to the poet’s only son being his great, great grandfather.

“The author and the topic he writes about are made for one another which should come as no surprise for Seán Manchester is directly descended from the poet Byron and played as a child amid the sombre trees of Newstead Abbey Park where lived his grandparents and where stands in semi-ruin the Gothic abode of his illustrious ancestor.”

~ Diana Brewester, Highgate Byron Society, London, England

“Seán Manchester’s welcome biography of Lady Caroline Lamb brings the best news for the academic world. I feel that he is the only scholar who can write a revealing book on such a personality.”

~ Dr Devendra P Varma, International Byron Society, Canada

“I was very interested to read of Seán Manchester’s progress in discovering about Caroline’s strange activities.”

~ Lady Brocket, Brocket Hall, Welwyn, Hertfordshire, England

“This handsomely produced book, written with ardour, is the result of intensive research into family archives. Well documented, with extracts from letters and a valuable bibliography, the narrative recreates the spirit of the times and the character portrait of Caroline Lamb emerges vibrant with life. The author evokes the atmosphere of the very chamber in Brocket Hall which Caroline had turned into a shrine to Lord Byron, and where she penned her letters, wrote poems or played upon the harpsichord. As time effaced the memory of Caroline, several uncanny incidents continued to occur at the Hall. There were hauntings by a pale apparition of a woman in rustling robe playing Chopin on the piano as the chandelier swung from the carved roof. At other times a tinkling music resonated like angelic notes of a harpsichord at dead of night wafting on the wind from afar. This biography reproduces her image as a pensive young girl, ‘fascinating’ according to Byron, an untamed gazelle, delightful although impossible, delicate and daring, naïve yet witty, unstable but extreme in everything.”

~ Review extract from The Byron Journal, The Byron Society, England

Illustrated with unique photographs, including Lord Byron’s coffin in its vault, and Lady Caroline’s forgotten resting place, this hardcover edition is the last breath of the Romantic Movement — the only biography of its kind.