The last — and arguably most intense — love affair of one of the greatest British poets
Teresa Guiccioli was just nineteen, and recently married to a jealous husband nearly three times her age, when she met Byron. He was one of the most infamous men in Europe; she was an inexperienced but beautiful provincial noblewoman. For the next four years, until Byron went to Greece, this formed the basis of a passionate, scandalous, and very intense love affair.
Iris Origo, bestselling biographer and author of War in Val d'Orcia, was the first to have access to over a hundred love letters and family papers from the time of this affair. She uses these to illustrate the moving story, told with authority and clarity, of Byron and Teresa's turbulent romance.
Iris Origo (1902–1988) was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces. Pushkin Press also publishes her bestselling diaries, War in Val d'Orcia, her memoir, Images and Shadows, and A Study in Solitude: The Life of Leopardi — Poet, Romantic and Radical. The newly discovered diary covering the years 1939–1940, A Chill in the Air, is forthcoming from Pushkin Press.
