Savanna Malloy Staff Writer
Hofstra professor and novelist Julia Markus was featured for the third installment of the “Great Writers, Great Readings” series on Wednesday.
Markus has written four novels and three critically acclaimed biographies, including “Lady Byron and Her Daughters,” which she read from at the event.
The recently released biography is a fascinating piece that gives the reader a profound look into the inner workings of this extraordinary 19th-century divorced single mother’s life. It portrays Lady Byron as an early feminist wife who refused to be humiliated by her abusive and scornful poet husband, Lord Byron.
After a year of marriage that produced her child, Ada, Lady Byron separated from her husband and created a new life for herself and her daughter.
Markus was able to gain access to Byron’s letters as well as the “Lovelace papers” that currently reside in Oxford, England. Through the extensive and tireless research of these documents she was able to paint a sharp picture of Lady Byron and her daughters for the reader.
“Letters are really full of life, and my method has always been to take a notebook and a pencil and copy,” Markus said. “And as I write a section of a letter that interests me, I absorb it.”
“I almost have to get in the skin of the person I’m dealing with,” she elaborated.
The “Great Writers, Great Readings” series was launched by Hofstra University in appreciation of the significance of writing and literature in a liberal arts education and has already recognized two other brilliant writers this semester, Rowan Ricardo Phillips and Karen Russell.
The semester’s series finale will feature fiction novelist Emily St. John Mandel on Wednesday, Dec. 2 at 7 p.m. in the Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library.