Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2005
544 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
With the originality, richness, and daring of the poets themselves, Passion presents the Romantic generation in a new and unforgettable light.
In the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, three poets--Byron, Shelley, and Keats--come to prominence, famous and infamous, for their vivid personalities, and their glamorous, shocking, and sometimes tragic lives. In this electrifying novel, those lives are explored through the eyes of the women who knew and loved them--intensely, scandalously.
Four women from widely different backgrounds are linked by a sensational fate. Mary Shelley: the gifted daughter of gifted parents, for whom passion leads to exile, loss, and a unique fame. Lady Caroline Lamb: born to fabulous wealth and aristocratic position, who risks everything for the ultimate love affair. Fanny Brawne: her quiet, middle-class girlhood is transformed--and immortalized--by a disturbing encounter with genius. Augusta Leigh: the unassuming poor relation who finds herself flouting the greatest of all taboos.
'The attempted suicide of Mary Wollstonecraft opens this carefully researched, deeply imagined and gorgeously written novel about the Romantic poets, as seen by the women who loved them.' - Publishers Weekly.
'Morgan's (The King's Touch) deft characterizations of these women and their relationships is a tour de force, though the dialog and detail that render it so vivid slow the pacing and may diminish the force of the narrative for readers not enamored with the people and period.' -Library Journal
'A sprightly, intelligent romp through chartered territory.' - Kirkus Reviews
'Teens will be intrigued by what intelligent and strong women were doing in the early 19th century in fact, Passion may inspire a quest to learn more about the Romantic poets and the short but uniquely creative span of English literature in which they lived.' -School Library Journal
This information about Passion was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jude Morgan, who studied with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter, lives in England. Morgan's previous works include Emily and Charlotte, a novel about the Brontë sisters; An Accomplished Woman; Symphony; Indiscretion; and Passion, which was called "one of the best books of 2005" by The Washington Post Book World; and most recently A Little Folly.
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