Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the 20th century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction --- above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea --- that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now. In I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing.

In 1815, Annabella Milbanke married Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron’s little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. Educated by some of the most learned minds in England, she combined that scholarly discipline with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination. Drawing on fascinating new material, Miranda Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations of both his wife and his daughter.