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Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land Paperback – July 3, 2006

4.1 out of 5 stars 33 ratings

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One of our most accomplished literary artists, John Crowley imagines the novel the haunted Romantic poet Lord Byron never penned ...but very well might have. Saved from destruction, read, and annotated by Byron's own abandoned daughter, Ada, the manuscript is rediscovered in our time -- and almost not recognized. Lord Byron's Novel is the story of a dying daughter's attempt to understand the famous father she longed for -- and the young woman who, by learning the secret of Byron's manuscript and Ada's devotion, reconnects with her own father, driven from her life by a crime as terrible as any of which Byron himself was accused.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“[An] intricate and stylish romp . . . both a Gothic extravaganza and a picaresque adventure.” — New York Times Book Review

“An eerily authentic simulation of Romantic literature . . . beautiful.” — Boston Globe

“Remarkable and convincing . . . Despite its Romantic trappings, LORD BYRON’S NOVEL pulses with contemporary vitality.” — Toronto Star

“An astounding display of scholarship and imagination . . . remarkable.” — Washington Post Book World

“Though it’s an impertinent undertaking, it’s also a beautiful success . . . Both charmingly romantic and stoically realistic.” — Seattle Times

“A complex, nested novel of literary and biographical reconstruction . . . A stunning, rewarding work.” — Vancouver Sun

“One of 2005’s most accomplished novels.” — Washington Times

From the Back Cover

One of our most accomplished literary artists, John Crowley imagines the novel the haunted Romantic poet Lord Byron never penned ...but very well might have. Saved from destruction, read, and annotated by Byron's own abandoned daughter, Ada, the manuscript is rediscovered in our time -- and almost not recognized. Lord Byron's Novel is the story of a dying daughter's attempt to understand the famous father she longed for -- and the young woman who, by learning the secret of Byron's manuscript and Ada's devotion, reconnects with her own father, driven from her life by a crime as terrible as any of which Byron himself was accused.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow Paperbacks
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 3, 2006
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060556595
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060556594
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 1.13 x 8 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #1,570,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 out of 5 stars 33 ratings

About the author

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John Crowley
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John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942, his father then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 14th volume of fiction (Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land) in 2005. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all his work is still in print.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
33 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book well worth their time and appreciate its writing quality, with one describing it as a skillfully done 'literary' novel. They find it enthralling, with one customer noting how vividly memorable it is.

5 customers mention "Value for money"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book well worth their time.

"I adored this book. I'm a huge Byron fan - both his works and his life are fascinating. This book does both justice...." Read more

"...This book is an amazing achievement...." Read more

"I purchased this for a college literature class. It's a good book and worth the read." Read more

"A intriguing novel that deals with the suposed discovery of a novel by Lord Byron...." Read more

3 customers mention "Enthralling"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book enthralling, with one customer describing it as vividly memorable.

"...have written, and his daughter, Ada, as created by Crowley, is vividly memorable, worthy of her exuberant father."..." Read more

"...I'm a huge Byron fan - both his works and his life are fascinating. This book does both justice...." Read more

"Beautifully written & intriguing!..." Read more

3 customers mention "Writing quality"3 positive0 negative

Customers praise the writing quality of the book, with one noting it is skillfully done as a literary novel.

"Arrived timely and in excellent condition. Beautifully written, an original and imaginative concept...." Read more

"...obviously not only an expert on Byron's life and works, he's also fluent enough to make it seem as if Byron was really writing the novel...." Read more

"Beautifully written & intriguing!..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2011
    John Crowley's novel Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land has its origin in a famous storytelling contest. In the Year Without a Summer (1816), Byron rented the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland and met up with friends Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley's stepsister Claire Clairmont was traveling with the Shelleys, who had eloped together from England, and John Polidori, Byron's doctor, was traveling with Byron, who was fleeing infamy. Unable to pursue outdoor recreations, the company grew bored and restless. Conversation turned to dark subjects such as ghosts and Erasmus Darwin's experiments with galvanism. Byron suggested a supernatural story-writing contest. Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein, while Dr. Polidori wrote The Vampyre, which would later inspire Bram Stoker's own vampiric tale, Dracula, and through Dracula, just about every other vampire story written. Polidori is believed to have based his vampire, Count Ruthven, on Byron himself. (Have you met a literary vampire who is not Byronic? I haven't.) The two major poets, Byron and Shelley, are not believed to have produced anything of note.

    Crowley's premise is that Byron did indeed produce a completed novel, The Evening Land, that was suppressed by his estranged wife Lady Byron. Crowley imagined that the novel was preserved by Byron's daughter, Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace, who is widely acknowledged to be the first computer programmer. Crowley's Lovelace is forced to burn the manuscript of The Evening Land by her mother, but she enciphers it first. Enter Alexandra "Smith" Novak, a web programmer for the website strongwomanstory.org. She and one of the website's benefactors are given a mysterious bequest by a mysterious man. It turns out to be the enciphered novel. Smith engages her own estranged (and notorious) father, a former Byron scholar turned filmmaker exiled from the United States because of a past nearly as sordid as Byron's, and her partner, Dr. Thea Spann, a mathematician, to help her decode the cipher. In the process, Crowley discusses the complex relationships between both fathers--Byron and Lee Novak--and their daughters--Ada and Smith.

    This book is an amazing achievement. I've read enough Romantic-era novels and Byronic poetry to hear Byron's authentic voice in the novel uncovered in the frame narrative of its discovery. Even Harold Bloom, that illustrious champion of Romantic poetry (and dead white males) enjoyed the novel and gave it a positive blurb:

    "Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land is an extraordinary confluence of High Romanticism and our Information Era: every note in it rings with authenticity. `The Evening Land' is a novel Byron indeed might have written, and his daughter, Ada, as created by Crowley, is vividly memorable, worthy of her exuberant father."

    If I can be allowed one quick digression, that last line smacks of all kinds of sexism to me, but that's Harold Bloom for you. The fact is, Crowley's Ada is "vividly memorable," as is her "exuberant father," either written or historically. The novel is a thinly veiled retelling of Byron's own life in many respects, and through her preservation of the novel, Ada comes to make peace with her father. Crowley's story certainly explains one of the great mysteries of Byron's legacy--Why would his daughter, taught to hate her father by a mother poisoned by her own ill will for Byron, wish to be buried beside the father she had never met?

    The emails between Lee and Smith, as well as between Smith and Thea, among other letters, form an epistolary frame in which Byron's novel and Ada's commentary are enclosed and share a similar story. Smith, like Ada, rediscovers her estranged father through his work, but the difference is that her father is still alive, and she has, if she chooses, the opportunity to end the estrangement.

    I struggled with how to rate this novel because as an authentic Romantic novel, the parts containing Byron's "writing" were dense, overblown, and worthy of Sir Walter Scott. Sometimes I had to plow through those sections even while admiring how much like Byron Crowley managed to write. The emails and letters were, on the other hand, quick reads. I like the format of the novel, the frame narrative and epistolary interchange. In the end, Byron's novel was as good as any other Romantic novel I've read, and that's saying something of Crowley's achievement. I can't think of too many writers who could pull off a feat like this, and whether I was able to put the book down at times or not, I have to tip my hat to his talent.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2005
    The young son of an Albanian mother is discovered in Albania by his Scottish father, Lord Sane, who brings him back to a deteriorating manse in Scotland and schools him for a new life as his heir. Ali, the boy, apparently tainted by the Sane family curse, soon begins his misadventures. A painful young love, a gruesome hanging, an escape by ship in the moonlight, the discovery of a young woman masquerading as a boy, ominous sleepwalking episodes, the periodic appearance of a bear, the arrival of a ghostly double, false imprisonment--all these events figure in Ali's story, which illustrate all the complications of a Gothic romance.

    Author John Crowley presents Ali's story as the missing novel written by George Gordon, Lord Byron in 1816, creating a scenario in which Byron's missing manuscript is sold to finance Byron's involvement in European movements promoting Liberty and Freedom. Clear parallels exist between events in Ali's story and events in Byron's life, but Crowley also connects Bryon, through his manuscript, with the life of Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, Byron's estranged daughter.

    In a third plot line, a web site designer, Alexandra Novak, known as "Smith," is working on a site devoted to women's science history. Georgiana, her client, purchases some papers found in a seaman's trunk which once belonged to Ada's son Byron, who ran away to sea. Georgiana shows Smith a single sheet of an unknown manuscript in Byron's handwriting, but there are many additional pages containing long columns of numbers, their importance unknown. Smith's attempts to discover the secret to the numbers, written by Ada, unfold simultaneously with Ali's story.

    Crowley maintains his fine sense of where and when to change the focus from Ali to Ada to Smith in order to keep the tension and interest high, creating intriguing plot lines which intersect and gradually reveal parallels in the lives of the characters. Life, love, betrayal, alienation, separation and reconciliation are themes pervading all the subplots, and the coincidences and moments of revelation, common to all romantic novels, keep the reader intrigued.

    There is no real suspense, however. Crowley begins the novel with an episode from Ali's life, making it obvious from the beginning that Byron's novel IS discovered. The biographies of Bryon and Ada are well documented, and no suspense evolves from new discoveries. The episodes in Ali's life are similar to those in many other Gothic romances, not unique. Still, I found the novel to be a delightful read--a terrific escape into romanticism, possibly the most classically romantic novel in recent years. n Mary Whipple
    12 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2017
    I adored this book. I'm a huge Byron fan - both his works and his life are fascinating. This book does both justice. Crowley is obviously not only an expert on Byron's life and works, he's also fluent enough to make it seem as if Byron was really writing the novel. I could not put it down. I read the whole novel in 2 days.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2007
    Great idea, that wore thin after a while. I loved the parts with the lovers communicating via email about the discoveries regarding the book. I loved the background of Byron's daughter's story. I didn't really get into the actual "novel" that much. Nice try though.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2020
    Arrived timely and in excellent condition. Beautifully written, an original and imaginative concept. Crowley is a favorite writer, and this is one of his best.