Lord Byron

• 22nd January 1788

† 19th April 1824

English writer associated with Romanticism and the Byronic hero.

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Lord Byron was born on the 22nd January 1788 in London under the name George Gordon Byron and died on the 19th April in 1824 in Greece (Hirschfeld 24; Coleridge). He was the 6th Baron of his family. His mother´s name was Catherine Gordon was heiress of Gight in Aberdeenshire (Scotland) wherefore Lord Byron became later his title. The marriage of Catherine and Lord Byron´s father Captain John 'Mad Jack' Byron was unhappy, for which reason Catherine not only lost her whole money and land in order to pay all the debts but further Lord Byron had to grow up without father. Captain John Byron visited Catherine only ones after giving brith to their son but left her right away again and traveled back to France where he died on the 2nd of August 1791 ([1]).

Physically Lord Byron was disabled - his right leg was shorthened cause of an infantile paralysis. In 1799 he attended the Aberdeen Grammar School but when he got his title after the death of his great uncle he changed the school and went to a school at Dulwich, later to Harrow, and in the end attended Trinity College in Cambridge. From his poems it became clear that he felt in love with Mary Anne Chaworth who did not reply his feelings. He was devastated about her marrying someone else ([2]; Kalmer).

In Cambridge he found some good friends but also had his first love with a young student called Edleston. Edleston died quite early in 1811 and it is suggested that the following Thyrza poems by Lord Byron are dedicated to Edleston. In 1807 Lord Byron published his first poem collection under his own name called Hours of Idleness. The response on his collection was exceedingly well and the few critics were confronted by Lord Byron in public with mockery. In 1809 he took his seat in the House of Lords and started travelling with some friends to Europe which is adequately for a young Lord. During his travels he started his most famous work Childe Herold's Pilgrimage ().

When Lord Byron returned to England he found his mother dead and information reached him about the deaths of Edlington and another friend. His letters during this time point out his despair and grief. In 1812 he hold his first speech in the House of Lords and received a lot of sympathy and respect. In the same year he published Childe Herold's Pilgrimage which brought him famousness ():

     Just turned twenty-four he "found himself famous," a great poet, a rising statesman. ([3])

He started several love affairs with for example Lady Caroline Lamb (William Lamb´s wife), Lady Oxford and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. The liaison with Lady Lamb went public and became a social scandal. It is further suggested that Lady Lamb, now socially dismissed, tried to bring Lord Byron as well to fall, wherefore the rumours about him having an incestuous relationship to his half sister Mrs Leigh are presumably supported if not even invented by her. Interestingly some sources follow these speculations and even state the third child of Mrs. Leigh (Elizabeth Medora Leigh) being his child ([4]; [5]).

In 1815 he married Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke who before turned down his proposal but later accepted. Anna was a highly educated woman whose main interest layed on mathematics which was extensively uncommon during these times (). She gave birth to their daughter Augusta Ada Byron in the same year who became a famous mathematician and who is still known today (the programming language Ada is named after her due to her work) ([6]).

But only one year later Anna got a formal divorce from Lord Byron and the rumours about him having an affair with his half-sister started all over again. Before his and the reputation of his sister got more besmirged Lord Byron decided to leave England again and some of his friends joined him. Under these friends were the doctor John Polidori (who later wrote the novel Vampyr from the notes by Lord Byron), Percey Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley). While telling each other horror stories at the Lake Geneva Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin/ Mary Shelley started writing her famous work Frankenstein ([7]).

Lord Byron travelled afterwards to Italy where he had a further love affair with Contessa Guicioli which caused a scandal, because he even lived with her and her husband in the same house. But Lord Byron was also politically active when he joined the Italian freedom fighters who fought for more democracy. Later he moved to Greece where he got heavily involved in the Independent War between Greece and Turkey. However, he did not experince the outcome due to a pneumonia on which he died on the 19th April in 1824.

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Works listed:

- Hours of Idleness (1806)

- English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)

- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I & II (1812)

- The Giaour (1813)

- The Bride of Abydos (1813)

- The Corsair (1814)

- Lara (1814)

- Hebrew Melodies (1815)

- The Siege of Corinth (1816)

- Parisina (1816)

- The Prisoner of Chillon (1816)

- The Dream (1816)

- Prometheus (1816)

- Darkness (1816)

- Manfred (1817)

- The Lament of Tasso (1817)

- Beppo (1818)

- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)

- Don Juan (1819–1824; incomplete on Byron's death in 1824)

- Mazeppa (1819)

- The Prophecy of Dante (1819)

- Marino Faliero (1820)

- Sardanapalus (1821)

- The Two Foscari (1821)

- Cain (1821)

- The Vision of Judgment (1821)

- Heaven and Earth (1821)

- Werner (1822)

- The Deformed Transformed (1822)

- The Age of Bronze (1823)

- The Island (1823)

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Bibliography:

Hirschfeld, Georg. Lord Byron. Menschen, Völker, Zeiten. Eine Kulturgeschichte in Einzeldarstellungen. 14 vols. Ed. Max Kemmerich. Leipzig: Verlag Karl König, 1926.

The Encyclopedia Britannica. Ed. E. H. Coleridge. 1905. Scanned and edited by Jeffrey D. Hoeper. 1999. <http://engphil.astate.edu/gallery/BYRON11.HTML>.

Yolanthes Bibliothek. Ed. A. Kalmer. 2003. <http://www.yolanthe.de/vorw_frame1.htm>.

LoveToKnow Corp. 2002. <http://www.2020site.org/lord_byron/>.

Ed. John McCormick. 1997. <http://www.adahome.com/articles/1997-12/al_birthday.html>.