1-dimensional and doesn't do justice to a great character
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If you want to read a really good biography of Rochester then I would suggest skipping this completely and choosing 'The Satyr' instead. Rochester is a great, if undeservedly, little known character, akin to Byron both in his life and his poetry, but Lamb manages to reduce both him and his times to a one-dimentional diatribe on alcoholism.
That Rochester drank too much is beyond denial (just as Byron and a host of other writers did) but to decide that the whole of his life and writings can be reduced to a symptom of alcoholism - especially given the lack of evidence - is just biased biographical writing at its worst.
Lamb decides that Rochester inherited a predisposition to alcoholism from his father (evidence??) and takes the story from there. There is little sense of either Rochester the man or the fascinating times he lived in, and his close relationship with both the court of Charles II and the less refined world of the theatre and actresses of his day.
The last chapters are made up of almost unadulterated poetry - not a problem in itself but if people want to read Rochester's poetry (which is well worth it) then they will buy it and do not expect it to fill what is supposed to be a biography.
Altogether a huge disappointment which says more about Jeremy Lamb than Rochester I fear.
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Worth reading
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At first I found this book to be brilliantly evocative and engrossing. However, it stalls after the first few chapters and becomes more like a rather dry literary critique of Rochester's poetry where Lamb cites passages from Rochester's work and then analyses them. I just felt this to be a bit of a let-down in comparison to the rich evocation of the earlier chapters. That being said, Lamb manages to present Rochester as an extremely flawed human being and this book is certainly worth reading if you want an insight into the man that was the Earl of Rochester.
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A fascinating portrait of a great and tragic figure
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Having heard a brief history of the life of Lord Rochester during an English lecture at the University of Leicester I developed an desire to dig a little deeper into the life of a man who produced such a schizophrenic selelection of poetry. Going to the library I found this book, and had difficulty putting it down. Rochester's life was so short, yet he achieved, and indeed destroyed, so much. Lamb's book is immensely readable and charts Rochester's life with both sympathy and verve. Yet his scholarly approach into the reasons behind his behaviour elevate the biography to a higher level, this really is relevant to those who would study his poetry. It seems a crying shame that this man who blazed through his short life in glory and tragedy, genius and despair, should be so little known today. A truly forgotten figure in English history.
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