George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

   

Lord Byron, English poet
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Lord Byron, English poet
Lord Byron (1803), as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
Lord Byron (1803), as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824) was the most widely read English language poet of his day. His best-known works are the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. The latter was left incomplete on his death. Byron's fame rests not only on his writings, but also on his life, which included extravagant living, debts, separation, allegations of incest and his eventual death from fever after he travelled to assist the Greek fight for independence.

Works

Lord Byron wrote prolifically.[1] (http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-list.htm) In 1833 his publisher, John Murray, released the complete works in 17 octavo volumes, including a life by Thomas Moore. His magnum opus, Don Juan, a poem spanning 17 cantos, is arguably the most important poem published in England since Milton's Paradise Lost. Don Juan, Byron's masterpiece, often called the epic of its time, is deeply immersed in literary tradition and, although regarded by early Victorians as somewhat shocking, is equally involved with its own contemporary world at all levels – social, political, literary and ideological.

Notable Poems:

  • The First Kiss of Love (1806) [2] (http://wikisource.org/wiki/The_First_Kiss_of_Love)
  • Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination (1806) [3] (http://wikisource.org/wiki/Thoughts_Suggested_by_a_College_Examination)
  • To a Beautiful Quaker (1807) [4] (http://wikisource.org/wiki/To_a_Beautiful_Quaker)
  • The Cornelian (1807) [5] (http://wikisource.org/wiki/The_Cornelian)
  • Lines Addressed to a Young Lady (1807) [6] (http://wikisource.org/wiki/Lines_Addressed_to_a_Young_Lady)
  • Epitaph to a dog (1808) [7] (http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/lord-byron.html)
  • English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) [8] (http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-Eng-P1.html)
  • The Giaour (1813) [9] (http://www.photoaspects.com/chesil/byron/giaour.html)
  • She walks in Beauty (1814) [10] (http://wikisource.org/wiki/She_walks_in_Beauty)
  • The Corsair (1814) [11] (http://www.photoaspects.com/chesil/byron/corsair1.html)
  • The Prisoner Of Chillon (1816) [12] (http://www.photoaspects.com/chesil/byron/chillon.html)
  • Manfred (1817) [13] (http://www.photoaspects.com/chesil/byron/manfred1.html)
  • Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818) [14] (http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/chpindex.htm)
  • Beppo (1818)
  • Prometheus Unbound (1820)
  • Cain (1821)
  • Don Juan (1824) [15] (http://www.photoaspects.com/chesil/byron/djindex.html)

A theme that pervades much of Byron's work is that of the Byronic hero, an idealised but flawed character whose attributes include:

  • being a rebel
  • having a distaste for society and social institutions
  • being an exile
  • expressing a lack of respect for rank and privilege
  • having great talent
  • hiding an unsavoury past
  • being highly passionate
  • ultimately, being self-destructive

The literary history of the Byronic hero can be traced from Milton, and Byron's influence was manifested by many authors and artists of the Romantic movement during the 19th century and beyond.

Life

Catherine Gordon, Byron's mother
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Catherine Gordon, Byron's mother
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Born in London, he was christened George Gordon after his maternal grandfather, George Gordon, 12th Laird of Ghight, a descendant of James I. His grandfather committed suicide in 1779. Byron's mother's, Catherine, had to sell her land and title to pay her father's debts. Biographers think her father's suicide, and the forced sale of her legacy and the loss of her fortune (thanks to Byron's father, Captain John “Mad Jack” Byron), may have been the basis for Catherine's schizophrenic treatment of her son, scolding at one moment and loving at another. When Byron's mother-in-law died, her will stipulated that her beneficiaries must take her family name in order to inherit. Byron added it and became George Gordon Noel Byron in 1822.

The couple had separated before Byron's birth in London. Catherine moved back to Scotland shortly afterwards. He was raised in Aberdeen in strained circumstances until the age of ten, when, on May 21, 1798, he became the sixth Baron Byron upon the death of his great-uncle, William Byron, 5th Baron Byron. He received his formal education at Harrow and at Cambridge. He eventually took his seat at the House of Lords, and made his first speech there on February 27, 1812.

The most popular person in Regency London, he wrote poetry and carried on illicit affairs, most notably with Lady Caroline Lamb, the wife of future Prime Minister William Lamb. It inspired one of his best and shortest poems, Caro Lamb, Goddamn. Rumours suggest he also fell in love with a choir boy, though scholars dispute the veracity and relevance of this. But the person who occupied the central place in his heart was his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. He wrote many passionate poems in her honor. The fact she had been separated from her husband since 1811 when she gave birth on April 15, 1814 to a girl – and Byron's joy over the birth – seems to substantiate the rumours of an incestuous relationship.

Augusta herself encouraged Byron to marry to avoid scandal. He reluctantly chose Anne Isabella Milbanke ("Annabella"), a cousin of the Lady Caroline. They married at Seaham Hall, County Durham on January 2, 1815. The marriage proved unhappy; Byron treated her terribly and was very disappointed when their child, Ada, was not a boy. On January 16, 1816, Lady Byron left Byron, taking Ada with her. On April 21, Byron signed the Deed of Separation and left Lady Byron and England for good a few days later. He never saw either again. (Ada later on worked with Charles Babbage on a memoir on the Analytical Engine and became known as the writer of the world's first computer program.)

Lord Byron wound up in Geneva. There he became friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a fellow poet, and with Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, believed to be the first science-fiction novel. He also had an affair with Mary's step-sister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had a child. Byron refused to have anything to do with Claire, and would only agree to be in her presence with the Shelleys, who eventually persuaded Byron to accept and provide for the child.

He went on to Italy, and in his two years there produced what some consider to be his best work, including Lament Of Tasso, and Don Juan.

Byron in Greece

Portrait of a Nobleman in the dress of an Albanian, painted by Thomas Phillips in 1813
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Portrait of a Nobleman in the dress of an Albanian, painted by Thomas Phillips in 1813

By 1823 Byron had grown bored with his life in Genoa with his paramour, Countess Guiccioli. When the representatives of the movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire contacted him to ask for his support, he immediately accepted, placing his fortune, enthusiasm, energy, and imagination at the service of the Greek cause.

On July 16, Byron left Genoa on the Hercules, arriving at Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands on August 2. He spent £4000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet, then sailed for Missolonghi in western Greece, arriving on December 29 to join Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos, leader of the Greek rebel forces. In Kefalonia he met a Greek boy, Loukas Khalandritsanos, whom he employed as a page and with whom he developed an emotional, and possibly a sexual, relationship.

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 took part of the rebel army under his own command and pay, despite his lack of military experience. But before the expedition could sail, on February 15 1824, he fell ill, and the usual remedy of bleeding weakened him further. He made a partial recovery, but in early April he caught a violent cold which was aggravated by the bleeding insisted on by his doctors. The cold became a violent fever, and he died on April 19.

The Greeks mourned Lord Byron deeply, and he became a national hero (Viron, the Greek form of "Byron", continues in popularity as a boy's name in Greece). His body was embalmed and his heart buried under a tree in Missolonghi. His remains were sent to England and, refused burial in Westminster Abbey, were buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham. At her request, Ada, the child he never knew, was buried next to him.

In later years, the Abbey allowed a duplicate of a marble slab given by the King of Greece which is laid directly above Byron's grave. In 1969, 145 years after Byron's death, a memorial to him was finally placed in Westminster Abbey.

Upon his death, the Barony was passed to a cousin, George Anson Byron (1789–1868), a career military officer and Byron's polar opposite in temperament and lifestyle.

Character

Lord Byron, by all accounts, was a particularly attractive person – one may say astonishingly so. He obtained a reputation as being unconventional and controversial. One of the most curious patterns in both his life and his writings is a conflict between his oft-expressed cynicism about humanity, and his passion for defending the downtrodden. From his early schooldays, he had a reputation as a ferocious enemy of bullies, and in his brief time in Parliament he was a defender of both Catholics and Luddites.

Byron was very fond of animals, most famously a Newfoundland dog named Boatswain; when Boatswain contracted rabies, Byron is reported to have nursed him without any fear that he might be bitten. Boatswain is buried at Newstead Abbey – the family's ancestral home that Byron sold in 1818 for £94,500 to pay his debts – where his monument is larger than his master's. The inscription, Byron's "Epitaph to a dog", is one of his best-known works.

NEAR this spot
Are deposited the Remains
of one
Who possessed Beauty
Without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man
Without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning flattery
If inscribed over Human Ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
"Boatswain," a Dog
Who was born at Newfoundland,
May, 1803,
And died at Newstead Abbey
Nov. 18, 1808.

Lord Byron also had a bear (reputedly because Cambridge had rules forbidding dogs), a fox, monkeys, a parrot, cats, an eagle, a crow, a falcon, peacocks, guinea hens, an Egyptian crane, a badger, geese, and a heron. Lady Caroline Lamb famously described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". Many attribute some of Byron’s extraordinary abilities to his affliction with bipolar disorder, commonly known as manic depression.

Byron allegedly had a ten-pound brain. (This is likely apocryphal; the average adult human brain weighs between 2 and 3.5 pounds.) In spite of his deformed right leg he was quite athletic and turned out for Harrow in the annual cricket match at Lord's against Eton. Byron was a strong swimmer and, in emulation of Leander, swam the Hellespont. He said the swim exhausted him so much that he feared Leander would not have had much energy left for his love, Hero – the beautiful priestess of Venus – waiting for him on the other side at Sestos! He also swam the mouth of the Tagus River, and from the Lido to the Rialto Bridges in Venice.

Byron Community

Nearly 200 years have gone by since the publication of fourth and final canto of Childe Harold, yet Byron's fame as a Romantic poet has not declined. The re-founding of the Byron Society [16] (http://www.byronsociety.com) in 1971 reflects the fascination that many people have for Byron and his work. This society has become very active, publishing a learned annual journal. Today some 36 International Byron Societies function throughout the world, and an International Conference takes place annually. Hardly a year passes without a new book about the poet appearing. In the last 20 years two feature films about him have been made, and a television play has been screened.


Preceded by:
William Byron 		Baron Byron Followed by:
George Anson Byron


See also

External links

 Wikisource has original works written by or about George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron.</div>


Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about:
Lord Byron

Electronic texts

Freely available electronic texts from Project Gutenberg:





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