Lord Byron biography

 George Gordon Noel Byron, sixth Baron  1788-1824


LIFE


Born in London, son of Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and the 

Scottish heiress, Catherine Gordon of Gight, Byron came into the 

title when he was ten (1798). His childhood was blighted by his lame 

foot and his mother's taunting him about it.


He was educated at Aberdeen (1794-1798), Harrow (1801-1805) and, as a 

rather dissolute member of "the fancy", at Trinity College, Cambridge - 

where his poetic career began with Hours of Idleness (1807), which

was savaged by The Edinburgh Review. Byron retaliated in English Bards 

and Scotch Reviewers (1809).


His European superstar fame and status - leading to the enduring iconic

concept and image of the Byronic Hero - began with the publication of

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812. His fame, good looks, mysterious

limp and title ensured his being lionised by London society: his

numerous love affairs and exotic lifestyle added spice; and the popular

insistence that Byron was the hero of his literary productions, plus

the nature of these productions themselves, fired the public imagination.

Social ostracism in England and the romantic manner of his death

merely fuelled things further.


In 1816 he left England and settled in Italy, leaving behind broken

hearts and a scandal concerning an illicit relationship with his

half sister, Augusta Leigh. He left Italy in 1822 to join the Greeks

rebelling against Turkish rule (being elected a member of the Greek

revolutionary committee in 1823), and in 1824 he died of a fever at

Missolonghi, a hero to the Greek nation.


On moral grounds, his body was refused burial in Westminster Abbey -

and so is in the family vault in Nottinghamshire.


PRINCIPAL WORKS


Hours of Idleness  1807

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage  (Cantos I and II)  1812

The Giaour  1813

The Bride of Abydos  1813

The Corsair  1814    (10,000 copies sold on first day of publication)

Lara  1814

Hebrew Melodies  1815

Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems  1816

The Siege of Corinth  1816

Parisina  1816

Manfred  1817

The Lament of Tasso  1817

Beppo  1818

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage  (Cantos III and IV)  1818

Don Juan  1819-1824

Marino Faliero  1820

The Prophecy of Dante  1821

Sardanapalus  1821

The Two Froscari  1821

Cain  1821

Vision of Judgment 1822

The Deformed Transformed  1824


THE POEMS


SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY


Published in Hebrew Melodies (1815).



SO WE'LL GO NO MORE A ROVING


Published in Life, Letters and Journals (ed Thomas Moore) in 1830.

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