Glenarvon


Glenarvon is Lady Caroline Lamb's first novel. It created a sensation when published in 1816. Set in the Irish rebellion of 1798, the book satirized the Whig Holland House circle, while casting a skeptical eye on left-wing politicking. Its rakish title character, Lord Glenarvon, is an unflattering depiction of her ex-lover, Lord Byron.

Theme

Glenarvon corrupts the innocent young bride Calantha leading to their mutual ruin and death. The picture of her husband, William Lamb, called Lord Avondale in the book, is more favourable, although he too is held to be partly responsible for Calantha's misfortunes: his biographer remarks that the book's message is that Caroline's troubles are everybody else's fault. The book is full of wildly improbable melodramatic scenes: Calantha's infant brother, the heir to a duchy, is apparently murdered on the orders of their aunt Lady Margaret, to ensure that her son will inherit the estates; yet later we are told that the child is still alive.
A second edition softened somewhat the book's sensationalism.

Impact

The book was an enormous success with the reading public but ruined Lamb's already questionable reputation. Society's leaders did not greatly mind reading about her love affairs, but they deeply resented the vicious and easily recognisable portraits of themselves in the book, which were its chief "selling point". One of those thus satirised, Lady Jersey, took her revenge by barring Lamb from Almack's, the centre of fashionable life, a sign that she was socially an outcast. A Melbourne biographer remarked that Lamb never found her way back into society again.
Holland House in Kensington, a centre of Whig society where Lamb met Lord Byron, is satirised in the book.

Literary echoes