The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron
Everyone wanted to be Lord Byron's wife: he was London's most famous poet and its most desirably notorious lover. On January 2, 1815, he married Miss Annabella Milbanke, a young lady with handsome prospects, good connections, and admirable ankles. Fifty-four weeks later, a scant month after the birth of their first child, she left him and his house and went home to her parents. She never saw her husband again.
What happened? Hadn't she known the sort of exotic life he led or did she really believe she could save his soul? Or was it something worse? Rumours were rife, but only they knew the secret. She never spoke to him again, and she devoted the rest of her life to destroying his reputation.
Fortunately Annabella was a fine and prolific letter-writer - as were her friends, family, and of course Byron himself. Here, often in the words of the participants themselves, is the exciting story of the greatest scandal of Regency England.
