Lord Byron
Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, Nottinghamshire | |
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Occupation |
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Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Spouse |
Anne Isabella Milbanke (m. 1815; sep. 1816) |
Partner | Claire Clairmont |
Children | |
Parents |
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Signature | |
Hereditary peerage | |
Preceded by | The 5th Baron Byron |
Succeeded by | The 7th Baron Byron |
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
Byron was educated at
His one child conceived within marriage,
Early life
George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788, on
Byron was the only child of Captain
Byron's father had previously been somewhat scandalously married to Amelia, Marchioness of Carmarthen, with whom he was having an affair – the wedding took place just weeks after her divorce from her husband, and she was around eight months pregnant.[15] The marriage was not a happy one, and their first two children – Sophia Georgina, and an unnamed boy – died in infancy.[16] Amelia herself died in 1784 almost exactly a year after the birth of their third child, the poet's half-sister Augusta Mary.[17] Though Amelia died from a wasting illness, probably tuberculosis, the press reported that her heart had been broken out of remorse for leaving her husband. Much later, 19th-century sources blamed Jack's own "brutal and vicious" treatment of her.[18]
Jack would then marry Catherine Gordon of Gight on 13 May 1785, by all accounts only for her fortune.[19] To claim his second wife's estate in Scotland, Byron's father took the additional surname "Gordon", becoming "John Byron Gordon", and occasionally styled himself "John Byron Gordon of Gight". Byron's mother had to sell her land and title to pay her new husband's debts, and in the space of two years, the large estate, worth some £23,500, had been squandered, leaving the former heiress with an annual income in trust of only £150.[18] In a move to avoid his creditors, Catherine accompanied her profligate husband to France in 1786, but returned to England at the end of 1787 to give birth to her son.[20]
George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January in lodgings at Holles Street in London, and christened at St Marylebone Parish Church.[1] His father appears to have wished to call his son 'William', but as her husband remained absent, his mother named him after her own father George Gordon of Gight,[21] who was a descendant of James I of Scotland and who had died by suicide some four years earlier, in 1779.[22]
Byron's mother moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790, and Byron spent part of his childhood there.[22] His father soon joined them in their lodgings in Queen Street, but the couple quickly separated. Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy,[22] which could be partly explained by her husband's continuously borrowing money from her. As a result, she fell even further into debt to support his demands. One of these loans enabled him to travel to Valenciennes, France, where he died of a "long & suffering illness" – probably tuberculosis – in 1791.[23]
When Byron's great-uncle, who was posthumously labelled the "wicked" Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, the 10-year-old boy became the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited the ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire. His mother proudly took him to England, but the Abbey was in an embarrassing state of disrepair and, rather than live there, she decided to lease it to Lord Grey de Ruthyn, among others, during Byron's adolescence.[24][25]
Described as "a woman without judgment or self-command", Catherine either spoiled and indulged her son or vexed him with her capricious stubbornness. Her drinking disgusted him and he often mocked her for being short and corpulent, which made it difficult for her to catch him to discipline him. Byron had been born with a deformed right foot; his mother once retaliated and, in a fit of temper, referred to him as "a lame brat".[26] However, Byron's biographer, Doris Langley Moore, in her 1974 book Accounts Rendered, paints a more sympathetic view of Mrs Byron, showing how she was a staunch supporter of her son and sacrificed her own precarious finances to keep him in luxury at Harrow and Cambridge. Langley-Moore questions 19th-century biographer John Galt's claim that she over-indulged in alcohol.[27]
Byron's mother-in-law Judith Noel, the Hon. Lady Milbanke, died in 1822, and her will required that he change his surname to "Noel" in order to inherit half of her estate. He accordingly obtained a
Education
Byron received his early formal education at Aberdeen Grammar School in 1798 until his move back to England as a 10-year-old. In August 1799 he entered the school of Dr. William Glennie, in Dulwich.[29] Placed under the care of a Dr. Bailey, he was encouraged to exercise in moderation but could not restrain himself from "violent" bouts of activity in an attempt to compensate for his deformed foot. His mother interfered with his studies, often withdrawing him from school, which arguably contributed to his lack of self-discipline and his neglect of his classical studies.[30]
Byron was sent to Harrow School in 1801, and remained there until July 1805.[31][22] An undistinguished student and an unskilled cricketer, he nevertheless represented the school during the very first Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lord's in 1805.[32]
His lack of moderation was not restricted to physical exercise. Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth, whom he met while at school,[22] and she was the reason he refused to return to Harrow in September 1803. His mother wrote, "He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth."[22] In Byron's later memoirs, "Mary Chaworth is portrayed as the first object of his adult sexual feelings."[33]
Byron finally returned in January 1804,[22] to a more settled period, which saw the formation of a circle of emotional involvements with other Harrow boys, which he recalled with great vividness: "My school friendships were with me passions (for I was always violent)".[34] The most enduring of those was with John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare—four years Byron's junior—whom he was to meet again unexpectedly many years later, in 1821, in Italy.[35] His nostalgic poems about his Harrow friendships, Childish Recollections (1806), express a prescient "consciousness of sexual differences that may in the end make England untenable to him."[36] Letters to Byron in the John Murray archive contain evidence of a previously unremarked if short-lived romantic relationship with a younger boy at Harrow, John Thomas Claridge.[37]
In the following autumn he entered Trinity College, Cambridge,[38] where he met and formed a close friendship with the younger John Edleston. About his "protégé" he wrote, "He has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him for ever." After Edleston's death, Byron composed Thyrza, a series of elegies, in his memory.[39] In later years, he described the affair as "a violent, though pure love and passion". This statement, however, needs to be read in the context of hardening public attitudes toward homosexuality in England and the severe sanctions (including public hanging) imposed upon convicted or even suspected offenders.[40] The liaison, on the other hand, may well have been "pure" out of respect for Edleston's innocence, in contrast to the (probably) more sexually overt relations experienced at Harrow School.[41] The poem "The Cornelian" was written about the cornelian that Byron had received from Edleston.[42]
Byron spent three years at Trinity College, engaging in boxing, horse riding, gambling, and sexual escapades. While at
Career
Early career
While not at school or college, Byron lived at his mother's residence, Burgage Manor in Southwell, Nottinghamshire.[22] While there, he cultivated friendships with Elizabeth Bridget Pigot and her brother John, with whom he staged two plays for the entertainment of the community. During this time, with the help of Elizabeth Pigot, who copied many of his rough drafts, he was encouraged to write his first volumes of poetry. Fugitive Pieces was printed by Ridge of Newark, which contained poems written when Byron was only 17.[44] However, it was promptly recalled and burned on the advice of his friend the Reverend J. T. Becher, on account of its more amorous verses, particularly the poem To Mary.[45]
Hours of Idleness, a collection of many of the previous poems, along with more recent compositions, was the culminating book. The savage, anonymous criticism it received (now known to be the work of
After his return from travels he entrusted R. C. Dallas, as his literary agent, with the publication of his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which Byron thought to be of little account. The first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were published in 1812 and were received with critical acclaim.[50][51] In Byron's own words, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."[52] He followed up this success with the poem's last two cantos, as well as four equally celebrated "Oriental Tales": The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and Lara. About the same time, he began his intimacy with his future biographer, Thomas Moore.[31]
First travels to the East
Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, owing to what his mother termed a "reckless disregard for money".[22] She lived at Newstead during this time, in fear of her son's creditors.[22] He had planned to spend some time in 1808 cruising with his cousin George Bettesworth, who was captain of the 32-gun frigate HMS Tartar, but Bettesworth's death at the Battle of Alvøen in May 1808 made that impossible.
From 1809 to 1811,
Byron began his trip in Portugal, from where he wrote a letter to his friend Mr Hodgson in which he describes what he had learned of the Portuguese language: mainly swear words and insults. Byron particularly enjoyed his stay in Sintra, which he later described in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as "glorious Eden". From Lisbon he travelled overland to Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, and Gibraltar, and from there by sea to Sardinia, Malta, Albania and Greece.[56] The purpose of Byron's and Hobhouse's travel to Albania was to meet Ali Pasha of Ioannina and to see the country that was, until then, mostly unknown in Britain.[56]
In Athens in 1810, Byron wrote "Maid of Athens, ere we part" for a 12-year-old girl, Teresa Makri (1798–1875).
Byron and Hobhouse made their way to
England 1811–1816
After the publication of the first two cantos of
Life abroad (1816–1824)
Switzerland and the Shelleys
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Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819
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Claire Clairmont, 1819
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Mary Shelley, 1840
After this break-up of his domestic life, and by pressure on the part of his creditors, which led to the sale of his library, Byron left England,[31] and never returned. (Despite his dying wishes, however, his body was returned for burial in England.) He journeyed through Belgium and continued up the Rhine river. In the summer of 1816 he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, John William Polidori. There Byron befriended the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and author Mary Godwin, Shelley’s future wife. He was also joined by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he'd had an affair in London, which subsequently resulted in the birth of their illegitimate child Allegra, who died at the age of 5 under the care of Byron later in life.[61] Several times Byron went to see Germaine de Staël and her Coppet group, which turned out to be a valid intellectual and emotional support to Byron at the time.[62]
Kept indoors at the Villa Diodati by the "incessant rain" of "that wet, ungenial summer" over three days in June, the five turned to reading fantastical stories, including Fantasmagoriana, and then devising their own tales. Mary Shelley produced what would become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and Polidori produced The Vampyre,[63] the progenitor of the Romantic vampire genre.[64][65] The Vampyre was the inspiration for a fragmentary story of Byron's, "A Fragment".[66]
Byron's story fragment was published as a postscript to Mazeppa; he also wrote the third canto of Childe Harold.
Italy
Byron wintered in Venice, pausing in his travels when he fell in love with Marianna Segati, in whose Venice house he was lodging, and who was soon replaced by 22-year-old Margarita Cogni; both women were married. Cogni could not read or write, and she left her husband to move in with Byron. Their fighting often caused Byron to spend the night in his gondola; when he asked her to leave the house, she threw herself into the Venetian canal.[67]
In 1816, Byron visited
Byron later helped to compile the English Armenian Dictionary (Barraran angleren yev hayeren, 1821) and wrote the preface, in which he explained Armenian oppression by the Turkish
In 1817, he journeyed to Rome. On returning to Venice, he wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold. About the same time, he sold Newstead Abbey and published Manfred, Cain, and The Deformed Transformed. The first five cantos of Don Juan were written between 1818 and 1820.[31] During this period he met the 21-year-old Countess Guiccioli, who found her first love in Byron; he asked her to elope with him.[31][67][70] After considering migrating to Venezuela or to the Cape Colony,[71] Byron finally decided to leave Venice for Ravenna.
Because of his love for the local aristocratic, young, newly married Teresa Guiccioli, Byron lived in
In 1821, Byron left Ravenna and went to live in the Tuscan city of Pisa, to which Teresa had also relocated. From 1821 to 1822, Byron finished Cantos 6–12 of Don Juan at Pisa, and in the same year he joined with Leigh Hunt and Shelley in starting a short-lived newspaper, The Liberal, in whose first number The Vision of Judgment appeared.[31] For the first time since his arrival in Italy, Byron found himself tempted to give dinner parties; his guests included the Shelleys, Edward Ellerker Williams, Thomas Medwin, John Taaffe, and Edward John Trelawny; and "never", as Shelley said, "did he display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening."[73]
Shelley and Williams rented a house on the coast and had a schooner built. Byron decided to have his own yacht, and engaged Trelawny's friend, Captain
Byron attended the beachside cremation of Shelley, which was orchestrated by Trelawny after Williams and Shelley drowned in a boating accident on 8 July 1822.[76] His last Italian home was in Genoa.[77] While living there he was accompanied by the Countess Guiccioli,[77] and the Blessingtons. Lady Blessington based much of the material in her book, Conversations with Lord Byron, on the time spent together there.[78] This book became an important biographical text about Byron's life just prior to his death.
Ottoman Greece
Byron was living in Genoa in 1823, when, growing bored with his life there, he accepted overtures for his support from representatives of the Greek independence movement from the
His voyage is covered in detail in Donald Prell's Sailing with Byron from Genoa to Cephalonia.[82] Prell also wrote of a coincidence in Byron's chartering the Hercules. The vessel was launched only a few miles south of Seaham Hall, where in 1815 Byron married Annabella Milbanke. Between 1815 and 1823 the vessel was in service between England and Canada. Suddenly in 1823, the ship's Captain decided to sail to Genoa and offer the Hercules for charter. After taking Byron to Greece, the ship returned to England, never again to venture into the Mediterranean. The Hercules was aged 37 when, on 21 September 1852, she went aground near Hartlepool, 25 miles south of Sunderland, the place where her keel had been laid in 1815. Byron's "keel was laid" nine months before his official birth date, 22 January 1788. Therefore in ship years, he was also 37 when he died in Missolonghi.[83]
Byron initially stayed on the island of
After arriving in Missolonghi, Byron joined forces with Alexandros Mavrokordatos, a Greek politician with military power. Byron moved to the second floor of a two-story house and was forced to spend much of his time dealing with unruly Souliotes who demanded that Byron pay them the back-pay owed to them by the Greek government.[87] Byron gave the Souliotes some £6,000.[88] Byron was supposed to lead an attack on the Ottoman fortress of Navpaktos, whose Albanian garrison were unhappy due to arrears in pay, and who offered to put up only token resistance if Byron was willing to bribe them into surrendering. However, Ottoman commander Yussuf Pasha executed the mutinous Albanian officers who were offering to surrender Navpaktos to Byron and arranged to have some of the arrears paid out to the rest of the garrison.[89] Byron never led the attack on Navpaktos because the Souliotes kept demanding that Byron pay them more and more money before they would march; Byron grew tired of their blackmail and sent them all home on 15 February 1824.[89] Byron wrote in a note to himself: "Having tried in vain at every expense, considerable trouble—and some danger to unite the Suliotes for the good of Greece-and their own—I have come to the following resolution—I will have nothing more to do with the Suliotes-they may go to the Turks or the devil...they may cut me into more pieces than they have dissensions among them, sooner than change my resolution".[89] At the same time, Guiccioli's brother, Pietro Gamba, who had followed Byron to Greece, exasperated Byron with his incompetence as he continually made expensive mistakes. For example, when asked to buy some cloth from Corfu, Gamba ordered the wrong cloth in excess, causing the bill to be 10 times higher than what Byron wanted.[90] Byron wrote about his right-hand man: "Gamba—who is anything but lucky—had something to do with it—and as usual—the moment he had—matters went wrong".[88]
To help raise money for the revolution, Byron sold his estate in England, Rochdale Manor, which raised some £11,250. This led Byron to estimate that he now had some £20,000 at his disposal, all of which he planned to spend on the Greek cause.
When the famous Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen heard about Byron's heroics in Greece, he voluntarily resculpted his earlier bust of Byron in Greek marble.[67]
Death
Mavrokordatos and Byron planned to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. Byron employed a fire master to prepare artillery, and he took part of the rebel army under his own command despite his lack of military experience. Before the expedition could sail, on 15 February 1824, he fell ill, and bloodletting weakened him further.[97] He made a partial recovery, but in early April he caught a cold; the therapeutic bleeding insisted on by his doctors exacerbated it. He contracted a fever and died in Missolonghi on 19 April.[97]
His physician at the time,
Brewer went on to argue,
In another sense, though, Byron achieved everything he could have wished. His presence in Greece, and in particular his death there, drew to the Greek cause not just the attention of sympathetic nations, but their increasing active participation ... Despite the critics, Byron is primarily remembered with admiration as a poet of genius, with something approaching veneration as a symbol of high ideals, and with great affection as a man: for his courage and his ironic slant on life, for his generosity to the grandest of causes and to the humblest of individuals, for the constant interplay of judgment and sympathy. In Greece, he is still revered as no other foreigner, and as very few Greeks are, and like a Homeric hero he is accorded an honorific standard epithet, megalos kai kalos, a great and good man.[99]
Post mortem
Byron's body was embalmed, but the Greeks wanted some part of their hero to stay with them. According to some sources, his heart remained at
Byron's friends raised £1,000 to commission a statue of the writer; Thorvaldsen offered to sculpt it for that amount.
In 1969, 145 years after Byron's death, a memorial to him was finally placed in Westminster Abbey.[108][109] The memorial had been lobbied for As of 1907[update]: The New York Times wrote, "People are beginning to ask whether this ignoring of Byron is not a thing of which England should be ashamed ... a bust or a tablet might be put in the Poets' Corner and England be relieved of ingratitude toward one of her really great sons."[110]
Robert Ripley had drawn a picture of Boatswain's grave with the caption "Lord Byron's dog has a magnificent tomb while Lord Byron himself has none". This came as a shock to the English, particularly schoolchildren, who, Ripley said, raised funds of their own accord to provide the poet with a suitable memorial.[111]
Close to the centre of Athens, Greece, outside the National Garden, is a statue depicting Greece in the form of a woman crowning Byron. The statue is by the French sculptors Henri-Michel Chapu and Alexandre Falguière. As of 2008[update], the anniversary of Byron's death, 19 April, has been honoured in Greece as "Byron Day".[112]
Upon his death, the barony passed to Byron's cousin
Personal life
Relationships and scandals
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Jane Elizabeth Scott"Lady Oxford"
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Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1812 by Charles Hayter
In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married
As a child, Byron had seen little of his half-sister Augusta Leigh; in adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has been interpreted by some as incestuous,[116] and by others as innocent.[46] Augusta (who was married) gave birth on 15 April 1814 to her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora Leigh, rumoured by some to be Byron's.
Eventually, Byron began to court Lady Caroline's cousin
Sexuality
Byron described his first intense romantic/sexual feelings at the age of seven for his distant cousin Mary Duff:
My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour, and at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 'O Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to Mr. C***.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment, but they nearly threw me into convulsions... How the deuce did all this occur so early? Where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke – it nearly choked me – to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever...But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection.[118]
Byron also became attached to Margaret Parker, another distant cousin.[46] While his recollection of his love for Mary Duff is that he was ignorant of adult sexuality during this time and was bewildered as to the source of the intensity of his feelings, he would later confess that:
My passions were developed very early – so early, that few would believe me – if I were to state the period – and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts – having anticipated life.[119]
This is the only reference Byron himself makes to the event, and he is ambiguous as to how old he was when it occurred. After his death, his lawyer wrote to a mutual friend telling him a "singular fact" about Byron's life which was "scarcely fit for narration". But he disclosed it nonetheless, thinking it might explain Byron's sexual "propensities":
When nine years old at his mother's house a Free Scotch girl [May – sometimes called Mary – Gray, one of his first caretakers] used to come to bed to him and play tricks with his person.[120]
Gray later used this knowledge as a means of ensuring his silence if he were to be tempted to disclose the "low company" she kept during drinking binges.[121] She was later dismissed, supposedly for beating Byron when he was 11.[46]
A few years later, while he was still a child, Lord Grey De Ruthyn (unrelated to May Gray), a suitor of his mother's, also made sexual advances on him.[122] Byron's personality has been characterised as exceptionally proud and sensitive, especially when it came to his foot deformity.[18] His extreme reaction to seeing his mother flirting outrageously with Lord Grey De Ruthyn after the incident suggests he did not tell her of Grey's conduct toward him; he simply refused to speak to him again and ignored his mother's commands to be reconciled.[122] Leslie A. Marchand, one of Byron's biographers, theorises that Lord Grey De Ruthyn's advances prompted Byron's later sexual liaisons with young men at Harrow and Cambridge.[50]
Scholars acknowledge a more or less important bisexual component in Byron's very complex sentimental and sexual life. Bernhard Jackson asserts that "Byron's sexual orientation has long been a difficult, not to say contentious, topic, and anyone who seeks to discuss it must to some degree speculate since the evidence is nebulous, contradictory and scanty... it is not so simple to define Byron as homosexual or heterosexual: he seems rather to have been both, and either."
Byron, was attached to Nicolo Giraud, a young French-Greek lad who had been a model for the painter Lusieri before Byron found him. Byron left him £7,000 in his will. When Byron returned to Italy, he became involved with a number of boys in Venice but eventually settled on Loukas Chalandritsanos, age 15, who was with him when he was killed [sic][129] (Crompton, 1985).
— Bullough (1990), p. 72
Loukas Chalandritsanos was Byron's Greek protégé whom he had rescued from Ithaca.[50][130] During Byron's voyage from Zakynthos to Messolonghi, Byron took Loukas as his page, but was concerned that the boy might be captured by the Turks. He spoiled the teenage Chalandritsanos outrageously, spending some £600 (the equivalent of about £24,600 in today's money) catering to his every whim over the course of 6 months.[130] On his deathbed he gave Loukas a bag of Maria Theresa crowns and a £600 receipt for one of his loans to the Greeks, but the government was in no position to honour this, and Loukas died in poverty six months later.[130] There has been speculation about whether the relationship between Byron and Loukas was homosexual, pointing to some of Byron's last poem verses as evidence for this claim.[131][130]
Children
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Elizabeth Medora Leigh (1814–1849)
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Ada Lovelace
(1815–1852) -
Clara Allegra Byron(1817–1822)
Byron wrote a letter to John Hanson from Newstead Abbey, dated 17 January 1809, that includes "You will discharge my Cook, & Laundry Maid, the other two I shall retain to take care of the house, more especially as the youngest is pregnant (I need not tell you by whom) and I cannot have the girl on the parish."[132] His reference to "The youngest" is understood to have been to a maid, Lucy, and the parenthesised remark to indicate himself as siring a son born that year. In 2010 part of a baptismal record was uncovered which apparently said: "September 24 George illegitimate son of Lucy Monk, illegitimate son of Baron Byron, of Newstead, Nottingham, Newstead Abbey."[133]
Augusta Leigh's child, Elizabeth Medora Leigh, born in 1814, was possibly fathered by Byron, who was Augusta's half-brother.
Byron had a child,
He also had an extramarital child in 1817,
During his time in Greece, Byron took interest in a Turkish Muslim nine-year old girl called Hato or Hatagée which he seriously considered adopting. Her mother was a wife of a local notable from Messolonghi, who, at the time, was a domestic servant to an Englishman named Dr. Millingen. The rest of the girl's family had either fled or perished after the Greek revolutionaries took over Messolonghi. Byron spent nearly £20 on elaborate dresses for Hato; he considered sending her to
Scotland
Although neglected by traditional historiography,[136] Byron had a complex identity and strong ties to Scotland. His maternal family, the Gordons, had its roots in Aberdeenshire and Byron was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School between 1794 and 1798. In terms of his own identity, he described himself as "half a Scot by birth, and bred/A whole one" and he reportedly spoke with a faint Scottish accent throughout his life.[137] Byron was regarded as a Scot by a number of his contemporaries, including his lover Lady Caroline Lamb and by his first biographer Sir Cosmo Gordon, who described him as a "Highlander".[138]
Byron's links to Scotland were demonstrated "in his campaign for the liberation of Greece, where a disproportionate number of his closest friends and associates had strong Scottish connexions, particularly with regard to north-eastern Scotland, which through his Gordon links remained central to the Byronic network throughout his life".[138]
Sea and swimming
Byron enjoyed adventure, especially relating to the sea.[22]
The first recorded notable example of open water swimming took place on 3 May 1810 when Lord Byron swam from Europe to Asia across the
Whilst sailing from Genoa to Cephalonia in 1823, every day at noon, Byron and Trelawny, in calm weather, jumped overboard for a swim without fear of sharks, which were not unknown in those waters. Once, according to Trelawny, they let the geese and ducks loose and followed them and the dogs into the water, each with an arm in the ship Captain's new scarlet waistcoat, to the annoyance of the Captain and the amusement of the crew.[141]
Fondness for animals
Byron had a great love of animals, most notably for a Newfoundland dog named Boatswain. When the animal contracted rabies, Byron nursed him, albeit unsuccessfully, without any thought or fear of becoming bitten and infected.[142][143]
Although deeply in debt at the time, Byron commissioned an impressive marble funerary monument for Boatswain at Newstead Abbey, larger than his own, and the only building work that he ever carried out on his estate. In his 1811 will, Byron requested that he be buried with him.[67] The 26‐line poem "Epitaph to a Dog" has become one of his best-known works. But a draft of an 1830 letter by Hobhouse shows him to be the author; Byron decided to use Hobhouse's lengthy epitaph instead of his own, which read: "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise/I never knew but one – and here he lies."[144]
In a letter sent to Thomas Moore,[145] Byron admitted to follow a diet "inspired by Pythagoras", who was a famous vegetarian.
Byron also kept a tame bear while he was a student at Trinity out of resentment for rules forbidding pet dogs like his beloved Boatswain. There being no mention of bears in their statutes, the college authorities had no legal basis for complaining; Byron even suggested that he would apply for a college fellowship for the bear.[146]
During his lifetime, in addition to numerous cats, dogs, and horses, Byron kept a fox, monkeys, an
"Lord B's establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… P.S. I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective…I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane.
— Percy Shelley, Diary of Percy Shelley
Health and appearance
Character and psyche
I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me.[149]
As a boy, Byron's character is described as a "mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attached", although he also exhibited "silent rages, moody sullenness and revenge" with a precocious bent for attachment and obsession.[118]
Deformed foot
From birth, Byron had a deformity of his right foot. Although it has generally been referred to as a "
He was extremely self-conscious about this from a young age, nicknaming himself le diable boîteux[153] (French for "the limping devil", after the nickname given to Asmodeus by Alain-René Lesage in his 1707 novel of the same name). Although he often wore specially-made shoes in an attempt to hide the deformed foot,[50] he refused to wear any type of brace that might improve the limp.[22]
Scottish novelist John Galt felt his oversensitivity to the "innocent fault in his foot was unmanly and excessive" because the limp was "not greatly conspicuous". He first met Byron on a voyage to Sardinia and did not realise he had any deficiency for several days, and still could not tell at first if the lameness was a temporary injury or not. At the time Galt met him he was an adult and had worked to develop "a mode of walking across a room by which it was scarcely at all perceptible".[26] The motion of the ship at sea may also have helped to create a favourable first impression and hide any deficiencies in his gait, but Galt's biography is also described as being "rather well-meant than well-written", so Galt may be guilty of minimising a defect that was actually still noticeable.[154]
Physical appearance
Byron's adult height was 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m), his weight fluctuating between 9.5 stone (133 lb; 60 kg) and 14 stone (200 lb; 89 kg). He was renowned for his personal beauty, which he enhanced by wearing curl-papers in his hair at night.[155] He was athletic, being a competent boxer and horse-rider and an excellent swimmer. He attended pugilistic tuition at the Bond Street rooms of former prizefighting champion 'Gentleman' John Jackson, whom Byron called 'the Emperor of Pugilism', and recorded these sparring sessions in his letters and journals.[156]
Byron and other writers, such as his friend
Trelawny, who observed Byron's eating habits, noted that he lived on a diet of biscuits and soda water for days at a time and then would eat a "horrid mess of cold potatoes, rice, fish, or greens, deluged in vinegar, and gobble it up like a famished dog".[157][158]
Political career
Byron first took his seat in the
Two months later, in conjunction with the other Whigs, Byron made another impassioned speech before the House of Lords in support of Catholic emancipation.[161][165] Byron expressed opposition to the established religion because it was unfair to people of other faiths.[166]
These experiences inspired Byron to write political poems such as Song for the Luddites (1816) and The Landlords' Interest, Canto XIV of The Age of Bronze.[167] Examples of poems in which he attacked his political opponents include Wellington: The Best of the Cut-Throats (1819) and The Intellectual Eunuch Castlereagh (1818).[168]
Poetic works
Byron wrote prolifically.
Don Juan
Byron's
Irish Avatar
Byron wrote the satirical pamphlet
Parthenon marbles
Byron was a bitter opponent of
Legacy and influence
Byron's image as the personification of the Byronic hero fascinated the public, and his wife Annabella coined the term "Byromania" to refer to the commotion surrounding him.[50] His self-awareness and personal promotion are seen as a beginning of what would become the modern rock star; he would instruct artists painting portraits of him not to paint him with pen or book in hand, but as a "man of action."[50] While Byron first welcomed fame, he later turned from it by going into voluntary exile from Britain.[39]
Biographies were distorted by the burning of
The re-founding of the Byron Society in 1971 reflected the fascination that many people had with Byron and his work.[175] This society became very active, publishing an annual journal. Thirty-six Byron Societies function throughout the world, and an International Conference takes place annually.
Byron exercised a marked influence on Continental literature and art, and his reputation as a poet is higher in many European countries than in Britain,
In April 2020, Byron was featured in a
Byronic hero
The figure of the
The Byronic hero presents an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavoury secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.[citation needed] These types of characters have since[dubious ] become ubiquitous in literature and politics.
In popular culture
Bibliography
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2023) |
Major works
- Hours of Idleness (1807)
- Lachin y Gair (1807)
- English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I & II (1812)
- The Giaour (1813) (text on Wikisource)
- The Bride of Abydos (1813)
- The Corsair (1814) (text on Wikisource)
- Lara, A Tale (1814) (text on Wikisource)
- Hebrew Melodies (1815)
- The Siege of Corinth (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- Parisina (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- The Prisoner of Chillon (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- The Dream (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- Prometheus (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- Darkness (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- Manfred (1817) (text on Wikisource)
- The Lament of Tasso (1817)
- Beppo (1818) (text on Wikisource)
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818) (text on Wikisource)
- Don Juan (1819–1824; incomplete on Byron's death in 1824) (text on Wikisource)
- 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 Age of Bronze (1823)
- The Island (1823) (text on Wikisource)
- The Deformed Transformed (1824)
- Letters and journals, vol. 1 (1830)
- Letters and journals, vol. 2 (1830)
Selected shorter lyric poems
- Maid of Athens, ere we part (1810) (text on Wikisource)
- And thou art dead (1812) (text on Wikisource)
- She Walks in Beauty (1814) (text on Wikisource)
- My Soul is Dark (1815) (text on Wikisource)
- The Destruction of Sennacherib (1815) (text on Wikisource)
- Monody on the Death of the Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- Fare Thee Well (1816) (text on Wikisource)
- So, we'll go no more a roving (1817) (text on Wikisource)
- When We Two Parted (1817) (text on Wikisource)
- Ode on Venice (1819) (text on Wikisource)
- Stanzas (1819)
- Don Leon (not by Lord Byron, but attributed to him; 1830s)
See also
- Early life of Lord Byron
- Timeline of Lord Byron
- 19th century in poetry
- Bridge of Sighs, a Venice landmark Byron denominated
- Asteroid 3306 Byron
References
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- ^ a b "Lord Byron". The British Library. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
- ^ Marchand, Leslie A. (15 April 2019). "Lord Byron". Lord Byron | Biography, Poems, Don Juan, Daughter, & Facts. Encyclopædia Britannica. London: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
- ^ "Byron and Scotland". Robert Morrison.com.
- ^ "Lord Byron (George Gordon)". Poetry Foundation. 30 December 2018. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
- ^ "The Nation's Favourite Poet Result – TS Eliot is your winner!". BBC. Retrieved 25 May 2019.
- ^ Poets, Academy of American. "About George Gordon Byron | Academy of American Poets". poets.org. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Perrottet, Tony (29 May 2011). "Lake Geneva as Shelley and Byron Knew It". The New York Times.
- ^ "Byron had yet to die to make philhellenism generally acceptable." – Plomer (1970).
- .
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- ^ "Ada Lovelace honoured by Google doodle". The Guardian. London. 10 December 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2012.
- ^ Boase & Courtney (1878), p. 792.
- ^ Brand 2020, p. 183.
- ^ Brand 2020, p. 181.
- ^ Brand 2020, pp. 189, 200.
- ^ Brand 2020, p. 212.
- ^ a b c Galt (1830), Chapter 1.
- ^ Brand 2020, p. 221.
- ^ Elze 1872, p. 11.
- ^ Brand 2020, p. 236.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Byron as a Boy; His Mother's Influence – His School Days and Mary Chaworth" (PDF). The New York Times. 26 February 1898. Retrieved 11 July 2008.
- ^ Brand 2020, p. 254.
- ^ Grosskurth 1997, p. 34.
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- ^ a b Galt (1830), Chapter 3.
- ^ "George Gordon Byron". MUZAFFAR.UZ (in Russian). 22 January 2023. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
- ^ "George Gordon Byron's Poems with Analysis – KeyToPoetry.com". keytopoetry.com. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
- ^ a b c McGann (2013).
- ^ Galt 1830, p. 36.
- ^ a b c d e f g Cousin 1910, p. 67.
- ^ Williamson, Martin (18 June 2005). "The oldest fixture of them all: the annual Eton vs Harrow match". Cricinfo Magazine. London: Wisden Group. Retrieved 23 July 2008.[permanent dead link]
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 33.
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 37.
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 404.
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 40.
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 5.
- ^ "Byron [post Noel], George (Gordon), Baron Byron (BRN805G)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c Allen (2003).
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 61.
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 39.
- ISBN 978-0-231-09670-6.
- ^ "Lord Byron Biography". A&E Television Networks. 2016.
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- ^ Lord Byron. "To Mary".
- ^ a b c d e f Hoeper, Jeffrey D. (17 December 2002). "The Sodomizing Biographer: Leslie Marchand's Portrait of Byron". Arkansas State University. Archived from the original on 10 May 2003. Retrieved 11 July 2008.
- ^ Dallas 1824, p. 18.
- ^ Dallas 1824, p. 46.
- ^ Dallas 1824, p. 55.
- ^ The Independent on Sunday. London. Retrieved 22 July 2008.
- ^ a b c Stabler (1999).
- ^ Moore, Thomas (2006). "Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, 1830, volume 1". In Ratcliffe, Susan (ed.). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Lansdown (2012).
- ^ Blackstone (1974).
- ^ Marchand, p. 45.
- ^ a b Dauti, Daut (30 January 2018). Britain, the Albanian Question and the Demise of the Ottoman Empire 1876–1914 (phd). University of Leeds. pp. 29–30.
- ^ "The Hellespont – European Romanticisms in Association". 23 April 2020.
- ^ "Lord Byron, 19th-century bad boy". The British Library. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
- ^ Alexander Kilgour, Anecdotes of Lord Byron: From Authentic Sources; with Remarks Illustrative of His Connection with the Principal Literary of the Present Day, Knight and Lacey, London (1925) – Google Books p. 32
- ^ John Galt, The Complete Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2, Baudry's European Library (1837) – Google Books cvii
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- ^ Silvia Bordoni (2005). "Lord Byron and Germaine de Staël" (PDF). University of Nottingham.
- ^ "The Vampyre by John Polidori". British Library.
- doi:10.7202/011135ar.
- ^ "John Polidori & the Vampyre Byron". www.angelfire.com. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
- ^ "'A Fragment', from Mazeppa by Lord George Byron". British Library.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Elze (1872).
- ^ Byron, George Gordon (1870). Lord Byron's Armenian exercises and poetry. Duke University Libraries. Venice : In the island of S. Lazzaro.
- Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1976, pp. 266–267.
- ^ Graziani, Natale (1995). Letters: Byron e Teresa, L'Amore Italiano. Milan. p. 22.
- ^ Letter to John Cam Hobhouse of Novembre 21, 1819.
- ^ Shelley, Percy (1964). Letters: Shelley in Italy. Clarendon Press. p. 330.
- ^ Moore, Thomas, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, London, 1830, p. 612
- ^ Lovell 1954, p. 368.
- ^ Prell, Donald (2010). A Biography of Captain Daniel Roberts. Palm Springs, CA: Strand Publishing. p. 66.
- ^ Trelawny, Edward, Recollections of the last days of Shelley and Byron, ed. H Frowde 1906, p. 88
- ^ a b c Cousin 1910, p. 68.
- ^ "Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington | Orlando". orlando.cambridge.org. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
- ^ Lovell 1954, p. 369.
- ^ a b Brewer 2011, p. 197.
- ^ Brewer 2011, pp. 197, 199.
- ^ Prell 2009a.
- ^ Prell 2009b.
- ^ Brewer 2011, p. 201.
- ^ Brewer 2011, p. 202.
- ^ Brewer 2011, p. 205.
- ^ Brewer 2011, pp. 207–208.
- ^ a b Brewer 2011, p. 212.
- ^ a b c Brewer 2011, p. 210.
- ^ Brewer 2011, p. 211.
- ^ a b c Brewer 2011, p. 213.
- ^ a b Brewer 2011, p. 215.
- ^ Brewer 2011, pp. 215–216.
- ^ Brewer 2011, pp. 216–217.
- ^ Brewer 2011, p. 216.
- ^ Brewer 2011, p. 217.
- ^ a b Neil Fraistat; Steven E Jones (November 2000). "The Byron Chronology". Romantic Circles. University of Maryland. Retrieved 15 May 2012.
- ^ Brewer 2011, p. 219.
- ^ Brewer 2011, pp. 215–219.
- ^ Edgcumbe (1972), pp. 185–190.
- ^ Gamba (1975).
- ^ Dionysios Solomos. "Εις το Θάνατο του Λόρδου Μπάιρον" [To the Death of Lord Byron] (in Greek). Retrieved 20 November 2008.
- ^ "Heart Burial". Time. 31 July 1933. Archived from the original on 8 August 2013. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
- ^ Mondragon, Brenda. "Lord Byron". Neurotic Poets C. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
- ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5.
- ^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 6724–6725). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
- ^ Pevsner (1951), p. 85.
- ^ "Westminster Abbey Poets' Corner". Dean and Chapter of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter Westminster. Retrieved 31 May 2009.
- ^ "Westminster Abbey Lord Byron". Dean and Chapter of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter Westminster. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- ^ "Byron Monument for the Abbey: Movement to Get Memorial in Poets' Corner Is Begun" (PDF). The New York Times. 12 July 1907. Retrieved 11 July 2008.
- ^ Ripley's Believe It or Not!, 3rd Series, 1950; p. xvi.
- ^ Martin Wainwright (18 October 2008). "Greeks honour fallen hero Byron with a day of his own". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 May 2017.
- ^ a b Wong, Ling-Mei (14 October 2004). "Professor to speak about his book, 'Lady Caroline Lamb'". Spartan Daily. San Jose State University. Archived from the original on 7 December 2008. Retrieved 11 July 2008.
- ^ a b Castle, Terry (13 April 1997). "'Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know': A biography that sees Lord Byron as a victim of circumstances". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
- ^ "Ireland: Poetic justice at home of Byron's exiled lover". Sunday Times: Property. Dublin, Ireland: The Times Online. 17 November 2002. Retrieved 21 February 2010.
'Mad, bad and dangerous to know' has become Lord Byron's lasting epitaph. Lady Caroline Lamb coined the phrase after her first meeting with the poet at a society event in 1812.
- ^ a b c d "Lady Caroline Lamb – Lord Byron's Lovers". Retrieved 20 November 2008.
- ^ Barger (2011), p. 15.
- ^ a b Moore, Thomas, The Works of Lord Byron: With His Letters and Journals, and His Life, John Murray, 1835.
- ^ Marchand 1982, p. 277.
- ^ Marchand 1957, p. 139.
- ^ Marchand 1957, p. 435.
- ^ a b Marchand 1957, p. 442.
- ^ a b Emily A. Bernhard Jackson, "Least Like Saints: The Vexed Issue of Byron's Sexuality, The Byron Journal, (2010) 38#1 pp. 29–37.
- ^ Crompton (1985).
- ^ Crompton, Louis (8 January 2007). "Byron, George Gordon, Lord". glbtq.com. Archived from the original on 11 April 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2011.
- ^ Crompton (1985), pp. 123–128.
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, p. 135.
- ^ Tuite (2015), p. 156.
- ^ Contrary to later misconception, Byron was not killed in battle nor died from battle wounds. See also The Dictionary of Misinformation (1975) by Tom Burname, Futura Publications, 1985, pp. 39–40.
- ^ a b c d e Brewer 2011, p. 214.
- ^ Snyder, Clifton (2007). "Homoerotic poems by Lord Byron". California State University, Long Beach.
- ^ Marchand, Byron's Letters and Journals, 1982.
- ^ "Mystery of Byron, an illegitimate child and Linby church". Hucknall Dispatch. 1 June 2010. Archived from the original on 24 June 2015.
- ^ "Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace". Retrieved 11 July 2010.
- ^ "Ada Lovelace: Original and Visionary, but No Programmer". OpenMind. 9 December 2015. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
- ^ Pittock, Murray. "Scotland, The Global History: 1603 to the Present". Yale University Press, 2022, p. 13.
- ^ Pittock, Murray. "Scotland, The Global History: 1603 to the Present". Yale University Press, 2022, p. 222.
- ^ a b Pittock, Murray. Scotland, The Global History: 1603 to the Present. Yale University Press, 2022, p. 223.
- ^ "Lord Byron swims the Hellespont". History.com. 3 May 1810. Archived from the original on 6 March 2009. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
- ^ Matt Barr (30 September 2007). "The day I swam all the way to Asia". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
- ^ Prell 2009a, p. 13.
- ^ "Boatswain is dead! He expired in a state of madness on the 10th, after suffering much, yet retaining all the gentleness of his nature to the last, never attempting to do the least injury to anyone near him." Marchand, Leslie A. (ed.), Byron's Letters and Journals (BLJ), Johns Hopkins 2001, Letter to Francis Hodgson, 18 November 1808.
- ^ "... the poor animal having been seized with a fit of madness, at the commencement of which so little aware was Lord Byron of the nature of the malady, that more than once, with his bare hand, he wiped away the slaver from the dog's lips during the paroxysm." Moore, Thomas. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, 1833.
- ^ Moore, Doris Langley. The Late Lord Byron. Melville House Publishing, 1961, ch. 10.
- ^ Letter to Thomas Moore of 28 January 1817
- ^ "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was, 'he should sit for a fellowship.'" Marchand, Leslie A. (ed.), Byron's Letters and Journals (BLJ), Johns Hopkins 2001, Letter to Elizabeth Pigot, 26 October 1807:(BLJ I 135–6).
- ^ Cochran (2011), pp. 176–177.
- ^ Francis, Tiffany (21 April 2015). "Bears, badgers and Boatswain: Lord Byron and his animals". wordsworth.org.
- ^ Marchand 1957, p. 7.
- ^ MacCarthy 2002, pp. 3–4.
- ^ Cousin 1910, p. 66.
- ^ Gilmour, Ian (2003). The Making of the Poets: Byron and Shelley in Their Time. Carroll & Graf Publishers. p. 35.
- ^ "For Byron, his deformed foot became the crucial catastrophe of his life. He saw it as the mark of satanic connection, referring to himself as le diable boiteux, the lame devil." – Eisler (1999), p. 13.
- ^ Henley, William Ernest, ed., The works of Lord Byron: Letters, 1804–1813, Volume 1, 1897
- ^ a b Baron (1997).
- ^ David Snowdon, Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan's Boxiana World (Bern, 2013).
- ISBN 978-1-108-03405-0
- ISBN 978-1-108-44610-5
- ^ Dallas 1824, p. 33.
- ^ Dallas 1824, p. 65.
- ^ a b Bone, Drummond (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Byron. Cambridge University Press. pp. 44–47.
- ^ Byron's speech of 27 February 1812, in T.C. Hansard (1812) The Parliamentary Debates, vol. 21, pp. 966–972
- ^ a b Moore, Thomas (1829) [1851]. John Wilson Croker (ed.). The Life of Lord Byron: With His Letters and Journals. Vol. I. John Murray. pp. 154, 676. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
- ^ Dallas 1824, p. 205.
- ^ Byron's speech of 21 April 1812, in T.C. Hansard (1812) The Parliamentary Debates, vol. 22, pp. 642–653
- ^ Byron's speech of 21 April 1812, in T. C. Hansard (1812) The Parliamentary Debates, vol. 22, p. 679.
- ^ Lord Byron (April 1823). "The Age of Bronze". JGHawaii Publishing Co. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
- ^ Gordon, George (26 May 2021). "Don Juan: Dedication".
- ^ "List of Byron's works". Archived from the original on 24 June 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
- ^ Lansdown (2012), p. 129.
- ^ Lord Byron. .
- ^ Brown, Mark (27 September 2009). "Lord Byron's dig at William 'Turdsworth'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-8018-6500-8.
- ^ Atwood (2006), p. 136.
- ^ "The Byron Society". Retrieved 29 January 2021.
- ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.
- ^ "New stamps issued on 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth". ITV. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
- ^ Franklin (2013), pp. 127–128.
- ^ Russell (2004), pp. 675–680, 688.
- ^ ""Funeral Oration for Lord Byron" by Demetrios Galanos the Athenian". elinepa.org. 2 July 2023.
Bibliography
- Allen, Brooke (2003). "Byron: Revolutionary, Libertine and Friend". JSTOR 3853260.
- Atwood, Roger (2006). Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, And the Looting of the Ancient World. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-32407-3.
- Barger, Andrew (2011). BlooDeath: The Best Vampire Short Stories 1800–1849. Collierville, TN: Bottletree Books. ISBN 978-1-933747-35-4. Archived from the originalon 15 August 2017. Retrieved 25 May 2013.
- Baron, J.H. (1997). "Illnesses and Creativity: Byron's appetites, James Joyce's gut, and Melba's meals and mésalliances". PMID 9448545.
- Blackstone, Bernard (1974). "Byron and Islam: the triple Eros". S2CID 162373838.
- Boase, George Clement; Courtney, William Prideaux (1878). Bibliotheca Cornubiensis: a Catalogue of the Writings of Cornishmen. Vol. II. London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
- ISBN 978-0-521-78676-8.
- Brewer, David (2011). The Greek War of Independence. London: Overlook Duckworth. ISBN 978-1-58567-172-4.
- ISBN 978-1-4613-9684-0.
- Christensen, Jerome (1993). Lord Byron's Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-4356-3.
- Cochran, Peter, ed. (2010). Byron and Women [and men]. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
- Cochran, Peter (2011). Byron and Italy. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. ISBN 978-1-4438-3602-9.
- ISBN 978-0-520-05172-0.
- Dallas, Alexander Robert Charles (1824). Recollections of the life of Lord Byron, from the year 1808 to the end of 1814. London: Charles Knight.
- Edgcumbe, Richard (1972). Byron: the Last Phase. New York: Haskell House.
- Eisler, Benita (1999). Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. )
- Elwin, Malcolm (1975). Lord Byron's Family: Annabella, Ada and Augusta, 1816–1824. London: John Murray.
- Elwin, Malcolm (1962). Lord Byron's Wife. London: Macdonald & Co.
- Elwin, Malcolm (1967). The Noels and the Milbankes: Their Letters for Twenty-Five Years 1767–1792. London: Macdonald & Co.
- Elze, Karl Friedrich (1872). Lord Byron, a Biography. London: John Murray.
- Franklin, Caroline (2013). The Female Romantics: Nineteenth-century Women Novelists and Byronism. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-99541-2.
- Galt, John (1830). The Life of Lord Byron. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.
- Gamba, Pietro (1975). A Narrative of Lord Byron's Last Journey to Greece: Extracted from the journal of Count Peter Gamba, who attended his lordship on that expedition. Folcroft Library Editions.
- Grosskurth, Phyllis (1997). Byron: The Flawed Angel. Hodder & Stoughton.
- Lansdown, Richard (2012). The Cambridge Introduction to Byron. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-11133-1.
- Larman, Alexander (2016). Byron's Women. Head of Zeus. ISBN 978-1-78408-202-4.
- Lovell, Ernest J., ed. (1954). His Very Self and Voice, Collected Conversations of Lord Byron. New York: MacMillan.
- ISBN 978-0-7195-5621-0.
- Marchand, Leslie (1957). Byron: A Life. Alfred A. Knopf.
- Marchand, Leslie A., ed. (1982). Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-53915-0.
- Mayne, Ethel Colburn (1912). Byron. Vol. 1. C. Scribner's sons.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4279. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Moore, Doris Langley (1974). Lord Byron Accounts Rendered. London: John Murray.
- Moore, Doris Langley (1961). The Late Lord Byron: Posthumous Dramas. London: John Murray.
- Nicholson, Andrew, ed. (2007). The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-069-0.
- Parker, Derek (1968). Byron and His World. London: Thames and Hudson.
- Pevsner, N. (1951). Nottinghamshire. Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
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- Stabler, Jane (1999). "George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan". In ISBN 978-0-631-21877-7.
- Taborski, Bolesław (1972). James Hogg (ed.). Byron and the Theatre. University of Salzburg, Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur. Volume 1 of Poetic drama & poetic theory in "Salzburg studies in English literature"
- Tuite, Clara (2015). Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism. Vol. 110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-08259-5.
Attribution
- Cousin, John William (1910), "Byron, George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron", A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, pp. 66–68 – via Wikisource
Further reading
- Accardo, Peter X. Let Satire Be My Song: Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Web exhibit, Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2011.
- Brand, Emily (2020). The Fall of the House of Byron: Scandal and Seduction in Georgian England. John Murray Press. ISBN 978-1-4736-6431-9.
- ISSN 0264-0856
- ISBN 9780852246511
- Drucker, Peter. "Byron and Ottoman love: Orientalism, Europeanization and same sex sexualities in the early nineteenth-century Levant" (Journal of European Studies vol. 42 no. 2, June 2012, 140–57).
- Elfenbein, Andrew. Byron and the Victorians. (Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture). ISBN 978-0-5214-5452-0.
- Garrett, Martin: George Gordon, Lord Byron. (British Library Writers' Lives). London: British Library, 2000. ISBN 0-7123-4657-0.
- Garrett, Martin. Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Byron. Palgrave, 2010. ISBN 978-0-230-00897-7.
- Guiccioli, Teresa, contessa di, Lord Byron's Life in Italy, transl. Michael Rees, ed. Peter Cochran, 2005, ISBN 0-87413-716-0.
- ISBN 0-340-60753-X.
- Marchand, Leslie A., editor, Byron's Letters and Journals, Harvard University Press:
- Volume I, 'In my hot youth', 1798–1810, (1973)
- Volume II, 'Famous in my time', 1810–1812, (1973)
- Volume III, 'Alas! the love of women', 1813–1814, (1974)
- Volume IV, 'Wedlock's the devil', 1814–1815, (1975)
- Volume V, 'So late into the night', 1816–1817, (1976)
- Volume VI, 'The flesh is frail', 1818–1819, (1976)
- Volume VII, 'Between two worlds', 1820, (1978)
- Volume VIII, 'Born for opposition', 1821, (1978)
- Volume IX, 'In the wind's eye', 1821–1822, (1978)
- Volume X, 'A heart for every fate', 1822–1823, (1980)
- Volume XI, 'For freedom's battle', 1823–1824, (1981)
- Volume XII, 'The trouble of an index', index, (1982)
- Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals, (1982)
- ISBN 0-521-00722-4.
- Minto, William (1878). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. IV (9th ed.). pp. 604–612.
- Oueijan, Naji B. A Compendium of Eastern Elements in Byron's Oriental Tales. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999.
- Patanè, Vincenzo: L'estate di un ghiro. Il mito di Lord Byron attraverso la vita, i viaggi, gli amori e le opere. Venezia, Cicero, 2013. ISBN 978-88-89632-39-0.
- Patanè, Vincenzo: I frutti acerbi. Lord Byron, gli amori & il sesso. Venezia, Cicero, 2016. ISBN 978-88-89632-42-0.
- Patanè, Vincenzo: The Sour Fruit. Lord Byron, Love & Sex. Lanham (MD), Rowman & Littlefield, co-published by John Cabot University Press, Rome, 2019. ISBN 978-1-61149-681-9.
- ISBN 978-0-50001-278-9.
- Richardson, Joanna: Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries. The Folio Society, 1988.
- Rosen, Fred: Bentham, Byron and Greece. ISBN 0-19-820078-1.
- ISBN 978-2-35035-189-6.
External links
- Works by Lord Byron at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Lord Byron at Internet Archive
- Works by Lord Byron at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Poems by Lord Byron at PoetryFoundation.org
- The Byron Society
- The Messolonghi Byron Society
- George Gordon Byron Collection at the Harry Ransom Center
- George Gordon Byron Collection at the New York Public Library
- George Gordon Byron Collection at the University of Leeds
- Byron's 1816–1824 letters to Murray and Moore about Armenian studies and translations
- Biography at the British Library
- The Life and Work of Lord Byron at EnglishHistory.net
- Statue of Byron at Trinity College, Cambridge