This is a non-fiction book, released in 1990 which explores the connections between bipolar illness and levels of artistic mood. It covers several studies including many by the author herself detailing lives, family trees and tentative diagnoses. It also explores whether the suffering these people went through and still continue to go through are necessary to their artistic temperaments.
The first study undertaken by the author concerns British and Scottish poets born between 1705 and 1805, each poet is diagnosed as having either recurrent depression, manic-depressive illness (Bipolar I or II) or psychotic features. In the tables provided suicide and admission to asylums is also taken into account. The comments provided also detail why a poet has been put in a particular group. Although the diagnoses cannot be taken as truth, since they are historical, they are taken from various diaries, accounts of the poets' lives and medical records. By looking at this sample and comparing it with the control group of the general population, Jamison concludes that: twenty times the general population at least were committed to asylums; thirty times more were were tentatively diagnosed with manic depressive illness, cyclothymia or depressive moods and five times the rate were more likely to kill themselves. The results are described in detail in this chapter, and while she maintains that not all the diagnoses can be taken at face value, it is easy to see that this provides a possibly extravagant but reasonable scientific demonstration.
What follows on are studies by other people and also measurements of the occurrences of mental instability by month. It also displays the productivity of the artists by months; while some produce more effectively in times where their illness is the worst, many produce more when they are more well. It also compares the illnesses among different types of artists: poets, painters, authors, etc.
A case study into the famous poet Lord Byron (George Gordon) is then outlined. His works as well as medical records and family history are used to display illness in his life and those around him, and it illustrates how his illness was displayed throughout his poetry. The same is then done with Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Robert Schumann; the James family; Herman Melville; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Virginia Woolf; Ernest Hemingway; Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley; Samuel Johnson and James Boswell and Vincent Van Gogh.
This book is not meant to be easy to read, and does not necessarily aim to display that all art is undertaken within mania or great depression. It is not always easy to follow but if you have an interest in the subject it provides an interesting insight.
A parting poem by Lord Byron:
She Walks in Beauty
SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
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