In the north transept of Lichfield’s ancient cathedral stands a sculpture of a young woman sitting under a willow tree. She holds a scroll in her hand and her head is dropped in a gesture of grief. Below her there is a plaque bearing the words above “What poet’s voice is smothered here in dust…”, penned by Walter Scott. Some steps ahead, beneath the Choir Pavement lies the poet and scholar Anna Seward.
The first time I came across Newstead Abbey was when I received my second-hand copy of Leslie Marchand‘s “Byron: A Portrait”. In the middle of the biography, as usual, there is a section with pictures and portraits, one of them, of a beautiful building, with a footnote that read “Newstead Priory, Nottinghamshire”. I didn’t know […]
When Goodreads recommended me Passion: A Novel of the Romantic Poets , I was taken aback by both its title and its cover. It looked like the kind of badly written, cheap novel I do not like reading nor being seen with. However, fighting against my first impression, I decided to read some of my Goodreads’ friends’ reviews. […]
Last month I read Daisy Hay’s biography of the Romantics, one of the most recent accounts of the lives of the Romantic circle. This book had been in my to-read list for six years, since its publication in 2010, and I finally decided it was time for it. Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled […]
Francesca Blanch-Serrat