Showing results for "Miranda Seymour" in Biographies & Memoirs

One name links Betrand Russell and Axel Munthe, Augustus John and Henry Lamb, H.H. Asquith and Duncan Grant, Aldous Huxley and Lytton Strachey. To some she was a lover, to others a confidant and adviser. To many she was a mother substitute. But wherever the phrase ‘Bloomsbury group’ is spoken, Lady Ottoline Morrell’s name is not far behind.

Miranda Seymour’s biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil—and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once enables one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers to uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman. Persuasive, surprising and compassionate, this unforgettable biography brings Jean Rhys to life as never before.

In 1815, the clever, courted and cherished Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824, aged 36. The one thing he had asked his wife to do was to make sure that their daughter never became a poet. Ada didn't. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron's little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits.