George Gordon, Lord Byron, has gone down in history for his poetry but also for his reputation as someone 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know'. Lady Caroline Lamb, may have been referring solely to her lover when she said this, but a little investigation into his family history shows that it's an epithet that could have applied to many of his relatives as well.
At the start of the eighteenth century, Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire was home to William, 4th Baron Byron, an amateur composer and artist, and his young wife, France. The house was widely admired, the family fortunes seemed secure. But by 1798 when George inherited the title of sixth baron, the building had become a dilapidated ruin, and the fortune dissipated.
In the intervening years the family had immersed itself in seemingly one scandal after another; murder, elopement, separation and (above all) the running up of mountainous debts seemed to be almost everyday activities for the Byrons, even the daring sea-adventures of John (later vice-admiral), or the quiet, unremarkable life of Richard (who became a vicar) couldn't save the family's reputation.

Emily Brand's fascinating book follows the Byrons' ups and (more frequent) downs, their loves and squabbles, and introduces the reader to lives full of drama and excess. To be honest if they had been fictional characters they'd hardly seem believable.
The style is almost one of fictionalised biography, told on the one hand from the perspective of young George Gordon making his first acquaintance with his ancestral home and family history, and on the other charting the troubles that befell his forebears, and it's a technique which brings them to life on the page.

There's a lot to take in, especially as the family seem fond of christening children after their uncles or aunts, or even in some melancholy circumstances after a deceased sibling, but I found it an engrossing read which shed a whole new light on the poet Byron's character and heritage.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

i am afraid this book is not for me one bit. i might not be the best person to be reading this book and i will be dnfing this unfortunately

The Fall of the House of Byron; Scandal and Seduction in Georgian England by Emily Brand tells the stories of Lord Byron's ancestors, who were just as scandalous as he was!  If you're looking for a book about Lord Byron's life, this isn't it.  It is referenced, but assumes you know about it already.  

If you're looking for background on Lord Byron's family, or stories from Georgian times of elopement, murder, debt and adventures at sea, then this is a great book for you!

The Fall of the House of Byron was published on 16th April 2020, and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.

You can follow Emily Brand on Twitter, Facebook and her website.

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, and so many thanks to NetGalley and to John Murray Press.

I found this extremely heavy going and I’m afraid I gave up after the first 100 pages, not for me, Sorry!

I was interested to discover more about Lord Byron, the English poet and peer and this book covers many aspects of his wider family. It is very well researched but I would treat it as more of an academic reference book than a stand alone read. Interesting, well researched and well written but more about the entire, and often scandalous, family over generations than Lord Byron himself.

Thanks to netgalley for the arc.

The poet Lord Byron was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. This recent biography by Emily Brand shows that he is not the only member of his family to whom this description could apply! Subtitled Scandal and Seduction in Georgian England, the book takes the Byron ancestral home, Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire, as its starting point and shows how this once grand house falls into ruin over the years, mirroring the downfall of the Byron family.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, the Romantic poet, is obviously the best known Byron; a lot has already been written about his life and work, so he is not really the focus of this book. He does appear from time to time, but the majority of the book is devoted to the stories of his parents and grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles and their children. As was common in that era, the same names tended to be passed down from father to son and mother to daughter, so there are lots of Johns, Williams and Georges, Isabellas, Elizabeths and Sophias. The family tree at the beginning of the book is useful, but it’s still easy to get confused! However, some of the family members are given more attention than others and these include:

* William Byron, 5th Baron Byron – Known as ‘the Wicked Lord’, William Byron is rumoured to have tried to abduct an actress at the same time as negotiating his marriage to an heiress. He is also tried for murder after killing a friend in a duel. In later life (after his son elopes with his own cousin), William finds himself in financial difficulties, selling off parts of the family estates and unable to keep Newstead Abbey in good repair.

* Vice Admiral John Byron – Nicknamed ‘Foul-Weather Jack’, John Byron is a Royal Navy officer and explorer. The book describes his adventures at sea, including a shipwreck off the coast of Chile, his role in claiming the Falkland Islands for Britain, and the battles he fought in during the American Revolution. Towards the end of a career which had once seemed so impressive, John returns home under the shadow of failure and suffering from ill health.

* Isabella Howard, Countess of Carlisle – William and John’s sister marries the Earl of Carlisle and lives with him at his estate of Castle Howard in Yorkshire until she is widowed in 1758. Her second marriage, to a much younger man, makes her the subject of gossip, and after separating from him several years later, she travels Europe in the company of a German soldier, writing poetry, throwing parties and falling into debt.

* Captain John Byron – Later known as ‘Mad Jack Byron’, he is Foul-Weather Jack’s son and George Gordon’s father. In 1785, he marries a Scottish heiress, Catherine Gordon, for her money and proceeds to waste her fortune on ‘gambling, pretty women, thoughtless spending on clothes, alcohol and horses’.

Although all of these people were individually fascinating to read about (I was most interested in Isabella, an independent and unconventional woman who is often unfairly judged by the standards of the time), I found the structure of the book quite disjointed and difficult to follow at times. In the first half of the book, each of the main characters has a chapter devoted mainly to them, but by the second half their stories overlap so much that I was struggling to keep them all straight in my mind. Having said that, I’m not sure how else the book could have been structured as the actions of one family member obviously have an impact on the lives of all of the others and it would have probably been impossible to continue writing about each of them separately.

As well as exploring the downfall of the Byron family, the book also offers lots of interesting insights into Georgian life; I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the fashionable society of Bath and the friendship between Sophia Byron (Mad Jack’s mother) and the authors Fanny Burney and Hester Thrale. Emily Brand has obviously carried out a huge amount of research for this book; I can’t comment on the accuracy as I’ve never read any other non-fiction about the Byrons, but she does quote from a large number of primary sources and everything is clearly referenced at the end of the book. Although at times I found it all slightly overwhelming and felt that I was being given so much information I couldn’t digest it all properly, I still very much enjoyed reading this book and getting to know the members of this scandalous family!

'The Fall of the House of Byron' is a fascinating examination of three generations of the Byron family - and of their home, Newstead Abbey. Beginning with the arrival of the wide-eyed ten-year-old who would later become the infamous 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know' Romantic poet Lord Byron, the book then spirals backwards to the lives of his ancestors including the 4th Baron Byron - a popular amateur composer - and his dissolute heir William, 5th Baron Byron, who becomes known to history as 'the Wicked Lord', before returning to consider the scandalous poet, soldier and adventurer who is the most well known to history today.

Emily Brand has clearly done a lot of research for this book and as someone fairly unacquainted with the Byron family beyond Lord Byron's poetry, I did find myself getting a little lost at times. This may be because reading digitally meant I couldn't easily move between the family tree and the text - I suspect this would have been less of an issue in a hard copy of the book.

The Byron dynasty has a much more complex and fascinating history than I had realised and the book is told in an engaging narrative manner that does draw you in. I have to admit that there were a few moments when I found my interest waning - this is a fairly long and detailed examination that clearly has an academic rigour and occasionally also an academic level of details that went a little beyond my interest as a lay reader of the subject matter - but anyone interested in Byron, the Romantic poets, or the history of Newstead Abbey is sure to find this an extremely rewarding and well-researched read.

[Book Review] ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Emily Brand has produced a fantastic history of the family that gave us the Lord Byron most know. The detail, the connections, the flow of the chronology all seem effortless but this is how you know you have an historian, a writer & a critical editor before you. The Fall of the House of Byron is accessible history. There's a huge amount of information & so many people to keep straight but the storytelling keeps the reader from getting completely lost.
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I discovered I'm actually quite interested in the Georgians (who knew) & that Byron Bay in Australia is named for John (Jack) Byron.
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Do give this book a read. You won't be disappointed. You might be intrigued or amused or irritated by some of the shenanigans but you won't be disappointed with the book.
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Thanks to @netgalley for providing a free copy of this book for an impartial review.
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📸: @lordbyron_thepoet
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#emilybrand #johnmurray #johnmurraybooks #lordbyron #history #georgianlondon #georgianengland #hachette #byron #byronbay #bookreview

This is a fascinating history of the house of Byron that offers a great insight into this family. Tracking it through three generations, you are able to see the family history and get an insight into society at the time. There has definitely been a great deal of research done for this book and there is plenty to get your teeth into.

Sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming but I think this is the case with most books of this type. It is definitely worth the effort though.

**This review originally appeared on the Keats-Shelley Association of America Blog**

George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron was one of the most notorious literary figures of the early nineteenth century, known for his poetry, love affairs, adventures in Europe and flamboyant lifestyle. However, he was far from being the first Byron to be associated with scandal. In The Fall of the House of Byron, historian Emily Brand traces the history of Byron’s ancestors in the eighteenth century, focusing primarily on the generation of William, 5th Baron Byron (the poet’s great-uncle) and his siblings. As the book’s title suggests, the key thread running through this story is how the Byron dynasty fell from fortune through a combination of scandalous behaviour, financial ruin and cruel fate. Brand explores the combination of factors that led to the poet inheriting the barony at the age of ten, although he was not the direct heir.

There is a distinctly Gothic flavour to the history of the Byron family – the stories of murder, seduction and family inheritance could be taken straight from the pages of an eighteenth-century Gothic novel. William, known as ‘The Wicked Lord’, was an unpopular and eccentric figure who caused the family name to become associated with scandal – partly due to his trial for murder – and he steadily laid waste to the family’s fortune and estate at Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. Isabella, Countess of Carlisle, was twice married, entangled in various love affairs, and lived a significant portion of her life on the continent. She was also passionate about the arts and was known in her later life for writing a book of advice for young ladies, Thoughts in the Form of Maxims. John, or ‘Foul-Weather Jack’ (the poet’s grandfather) was a naval hero who acquired his nickname due to his reputation for survival in adverse conditions. One of the most memorable and affecting sections of the book is the account of his experiences when he was stranded with his crew in South America after the wreck of the HMS Wager in 1741. The Gothic element is further underlined by the presence of Newstead Abbey, once an Augustinian priory, at the centre of the narrative. Each chapter is named after a feature of the building or grounds, and the family’s decline is told alongside the decline of the Abbey itself, which had fallen into disrepair by the time William died.

As well as being a family biography, this is also a history of the eighteenth century, encompassing major historical events such as the American and French Revolutions, and the Jacobite rebellion. Seeing how wars and upheavals like these affected the life of one family gives a feeling of immediacy that is not always present in historical accounts, and illustrates both the impact on everyday life and the long-term consequences. The book also touches on a variety of other elements of social and cultural history, including theatre, education, medicine and illness, and the role of women.

The text is not solely a biography of Byron the poet, but his presence is felt throughout, and Brand is always attentive to the ways that, in both his life and his work, Byron was influenced and shaped by his ancestry – his seafaring grandfather for example inspiring elements of Don Juan – and this is reinforced with the inclusion of his poem ‘Newstead Abbey’ at the end of the book. Byron’s inheritance of the dilapidated family seat as a child may be a familiar story, but reading about it after learning of the trials and tribulations of his ancestors provides a different and somewhat melancholy perspective. I also enjoyed learning more about Byron’s father, John ‘Mad Jack’ Byron (son of ‘Foul-Weather Jack’). The story of Byron’s affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh is well-known, but one particularly intriguing piece of information discussed here was the fact that Jack, too, might have had incestuous feelings for his own sister. As Brand notes, in his letters “his affection persistently spilled into something decidedly unbrotherly” (p. 249). She also notes that the bond between Byron and Augusta was, in part, informed by interest in their shared ancestry and sense of family legacy.


Unusually, Byron himself is frequently referred to simply as ‘George’. Of course, this is partly to avoid confusion with all the other Byrons in the book, but it is also an effective way of removing the myth that surrounds him and showing a more vulnerable and human side to him. In the hands of another author, this might have come across as affected or gimmicky, but instead I felt that it exemplified Brand’s ability to make the reader feel close to these historical figures, as well as her own genuine affection for them.

Brand has clearly spent a long time researching her subjects, and she uses their own words as much as possible, including extracts from their letters, journals and memoirs. She is also a gifted storyteller, employing a variety of devices familiar from fiction which keep the reader’s attention and form a compelling story. At the beginning of each chapter, for example, there are short narrative passages – perhaps recounting Isabella’s passionate feelings for her lover or evoking a storm at sea – which have an almost cinematic quality to them. Brand also writes with a sense of humour throughout, often sharing wry asides with the reader. All of this makes for a highly entertaining as well as a very informative read.

Emily Brand achieves something here which I think shows a huge amount of skill: presenting meticulous historical research and scholarship in a way that is entertaining and appealing to academics and general readers alike. She writes in an accessible and engaging style which never tries to alienate a reader who may not be an expert in this period of history, but equally this style never compromises the integrity of her research. I imagine that many people will come to this book because they are interested in Byron the poet, but readers should be aware that, although the impact of his family legacy is considered, he is not the main focus. Rather, Brand’s story brings to the forefront a series of eccentric and fascinating figures who each have their own remarkable stories, but who have perhaps since been eclipsed by the reputation of their more famous descendant. I think the engaging style, compelling storytelling and mix of subject areas on display in The Fall of the House of Byron will appeal to a wide range of audiences, including readers of history, biography and fiction, and that it will also be of value to both literary scholars and historians, in particular to those interested in the social history of the long eighteenth century.

This is a well researched biography.

I dont normally read books on Georgian England Times but I gave this a try and wasn't disappointed.

It is written with knowledge of this era which is always a plus.

One thing we can take from this book is that the Byrons were an interesting family as a whole, and not only the sixth Lord Byron that most people know about. Emily Brand collected some good stories and presented them in a lighthearted narrative, managing to maintain my interest all the way. The endeavours, scandals and quirks of Lord Byron's ancestors definitely paint an interesting portrait of the poet's own life decisions and challenges, and although I don't necessarily connect his life choices with theirs, it's still interesting to read where Byron came from. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all Byromaniacs out there. From one Byromaniac to another... :)

This book mainly covers the three generations before the poet Lord Byron.
The author has apparently done a lot of research and waded through a lot of documents, considering the number of references at the back of the book..
Unfortunately, as we are dealing with a large and disparate family, the story jumps around a fair bit and it is sometimes difficult to remember which William or John one is currently dealing with.
The story starts with the 4th Baron Byron who built up his estate which was then squandered by his heirs. Of course, they still felt entitled to live up to their station
The most interesting section deals with the brother of the 5th Baron Byron who went into the navy and published a book about his adventures. The rest is pieced together from letters etc. and if all else fails we get a "he would have seen".
All in all, the book was a bit of a struggle. A family tree would at least have helped to keep all the Wiiliams and Johns apart.

I have dipped in and out of this book and have enjoyed learning even more about Lord Byron as the book combines new research with a pacey narrative and shows us the mesmerising life full of sex, obsession and madness. Emily Brand is a great Historian and has obviously studied this time period thoroughly!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

An interesting read on the Byron family covering the period of when they were at their best through the scandals and family squabbles that brought them and the ancestral home of Newstead Abbey to their lowest. The start of the book could fool you into thinking this was about Lord Byron the poet, but it is more about those who came before him. At times it was hard to follow who was who, especially with the generation that included the Poets father as some family members only play a small part in the story. The star of the story for me was Isabella, Countess and then Dowager Countess of Carlisle.
I read this with a general interest in our history rather than a specific interest in Lord Byron, and I feel that if you want to find out more about Lord Byron you may be left wanting more. However for learning more about Georgian life and society this is a great read.

I was given a copy of The Fall of the House of Byron by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

I'm afraid that I did not finish this book and it was definitely not what I expected to read. I guess I'm too much of a fan of Phillipa Gregory and thought that there might have been similar character development in this book, especially as Lord Byron was a pretty notorious character.

I read about a quarter of the book and felt that it jumped around too much to hold my interest. Maybe I'll pick up at another time.
I remember reading in another review that this book does touch upon slavery and I am interested in this aspect. If I ever read through I'll update and re- star accordingly.

Emily Brand is erudite in the subject of the Bryons, delighting us with a riotous romp through the family’s surprisingly dysfunctional history.
Magnificently rooted in early Georgian society this warts laid bare tale divulges the omnipresent quest for cash, blighting a family through three generations.

Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire first home to Sir John Byron, sets the subsequent scene for the first highlighted 4th Lord Byron in the retelling following the inheritance of the Abbey by our very own George Gordon Byron. The 4th Baron, William, best known for his marriage to teenage Frances and for siring the most infamous Byron 5th Baron William known in perpetuity as being the ‘Wicked Lord’. This William sunk both the family’s fortune and reputation through years of debauchery, murder and prolifigacy. For all Williams infamy his brother John ‘Foul weather Jack’ cut a more swashbuckling figure at sea. Tales of close to comic misfortune for Jack however, resulted in him too being blighted by unhappiness in marriage and fortune which punctuates the family through the generations.

With yet another Jack then surfacing, the suffering of the women in the families history deepens. Hints of incest if only in letters further shocks until Emily brings us back to George Gordon Byron.

One cannot help feeling though that the illustrious Lord Byron has been assigned somewhat short shrift. Though given his predecessors shenanigans perhaps Emily felt the best/worst had come before.

The Lord Byron that everyone remembers is the romantic poet who died fighting for the independence of Greece in the mid-19th century. However this George Byron was only the next in the line of reckless and profligate members of a diverse noble family who fell from power and riches over the preceding hundred years or so. This is an incredibly well-researched biography of that family following the escapades of various members through love, marriage, wild parties, scandal and poverty ending with the inheritance by a part-crippled, obscure heir. The family seat of Newstead Abbey is described with reverence and joy, the battles on the lake, the lack of funds allowing it to fall into the ruin depicted in the famous poem, and the story of the old retainer Joe Murray who saw so many of the family. I really enjoyed this book as the characters are so full of joie-de-vivre that they feel fictional, scandal follows scandal, and yet all of it is true and it offers a fascinating insight into high society in the 18th century.

This is an incredible biography. So insightful and unusually told. Gothic and colourful and mesmerising, I loved this story laid out this way.