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George Gordon Lord Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824)
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron
Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and
a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's bestknown
works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and
So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest
British poets and remains widely read and influential.
Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses including huge debts,
numerous love affairs, rumours of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his
halfsister,
and selfimposed
exile. He was famously described by Lady
Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". It has been speculated
that he suffered from bipolar I disorder, or manic depression. He travelled to
fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for
which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died at 36 years old from a
fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece.
Name
Byron's names were changed throughout his life. He was the son of Captain
John "Mad Jack" Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon (d.
1811), a descendant of Cardinal Beaton and heiress of the Gight estate in
Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Byron's father had previously seduced the married
Marchioness of Caermarthen and, after she divorced her husband the Earl,
had married her. His treatment of her was described as "brutal and vicious",
and she died after having given birth to two daughters, only one of which
survived: Byron's halfsister,
Augusta.
Byron's paternal grandparents were ViceAdmiral
The Hon. John
"Foulweather Jack" Byron and Sophia Trevanion. Vice Admiral John Byron
had circumnavigated the globe, and was the younger brother of the 5th
Baron Byron, known as "the Wicked Lord".
He was christened "George Gordon Byron" at St Marylebone Parish Church
after his maternal grandfather, George Gordon of Gight, a descendant of
James I of Scotland, who had committed suicide in 1779.
In order to claim his second wife's estate in Scotland, Byron's father had
taken the additional surname "Gordon", becoming "John Byron Gordon", and
he was occasionally styled "John Byron Gordon of Gight". Byron himself used
this surname for a time and was registered at school in Aberdeen as "George
Byron Gordon". At the age of 10, he inherited the English Barony of Byron of
Rochdale, becoming "Lord Byron", and eventually dropped the double
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surname (though after this point his surname was secondary to his peerage).
When Byron's motherinlaw,
Judith Noel died in 1822, her will required that
he change his surname to "Noel" in order to inherit half her estate, and so he
obtained a Royal Warrant allowing him to "take and use the surname of Noel
only". The Royal Warrant also allowed him to "subscribe the said surname of
Noel before all titles of honour", and from that point he signed himself "Noel
Byron" (the usual signature of a peer being merely the peerage, in this case
simply "Byron"). It is speculated that this was so that his initals would read
"N.B." mimicking those of his hero, Napoleon Bonaparte. He was also
sometimes referred to as "Lord Noel Byron", as if "Noel" were part of his
title, and likewise his wife was sometimes called "Lady Noel Byron". Lady
Byron eventually succeeded to the Barony of Wentworth, becoming "Lady
Wentworth".
Early Life
John Byron married his second wife for the same reason he married his first:
her fortune. 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. 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 in order to give birth to her son on English soil.
He was born on 22 January in lodgings on Holles Street in London.
Catherine moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790, where Byron spent his
childhood. 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, which could be partly explained by her husband's
continuing to appear in order to borrow money from her. As a result, she fell
even further into debt to support his demands. It was one of these
importunate loans that allowed him to travel to Valenciennes, France, where
he died in 1791.
When Byron's greatuncle,
the "wicked" Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798,
the 10yearold
boy became the 6th 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, his mother decided to rent to Lord Grey de
Ruthyn, among others, during his adolescence.
Described as "a woman without judgment or selfcommand",
Catherine
either spoiled and indulged her son or aggravated 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. She once retaliated and, in a fit of temper, referred to him as
"a lame brat".
Birth Defect
From birth, Byron suffered from a deformity of his right foot. Generally
referred to as a "clubfoot", some modern medical experts maintain that it
was a consequence of infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis), and others that it
was a dysplasia, a failure of the bones to form properly. Whatever the cause,
he was afflicted with a limp that caused him lifelong psychological and
physical misery, aggravated by painful and pointless "medical treatment" in
his childhood and the nagging suspicion that with proper care it might have
been cured.He was extremely selfconscious
about this from a young age,
nicknaming himself le diable boiteux (French for "the limping devil", after the
nickname given to Asmodeus by AlainRené
Lesage in his 1707 novel of the
same name). Although he often wore specially made shoes in an attempt to
hide the deformed foot, he refused to wear any type of brace that might
improve the limp.
Scottish novelist John Galt felt his oversensitivity to the "innocent fault in his
foot was unmanly and excessive" because the limp was "not greatly
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conspicuous." He first met Byron on a voyage to Sardinia and didn't realise
he had any deficiency for several days, and still could not tell at first if the
lameness was a temporary injury or not. But by the time he met Byron he
was an adult and had worked to develop "a mode of walking across a room
by which it was scarcely at all perceptible". 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
wellmeant
than wellwritten",
so Galt may be guilty of minimising a defect
that was actually still noticeable.
'Anticipated life' and the poet's psyche
"I am such a strange mélangé of good and evil that it would be difficult to
describe me."
As a boy, his 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. He described his first intense
feelings at age eight for Mary Duff, his distant cousin:
"How very odd that I should have been so devotedly fond of that girl, at an
age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word and
the effect! 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 thunderstroke
– 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."
Byron also became attached to Margaret Parker, another distant cousin,.
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."
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 [F]ree 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."
Gray later used these sexual intimacies as leverage to ensure his silence if he
were tempted to disclose the "low company" she kept during drinking binges.
She was later dismissed, supposedly for beating Byron when he was 11.
A few years later, while he was still a child, Lord Grey (unrelated to May
Gray), a suitor of his mother's, also made sexual advances to him. Byron's
personality has been characterised as exceptionally proud and sensitive,
especially when it came to his deformity. And although Byron was a very
selfcentered
individual, it is probable that like most children, he would have
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been deeply disturbed by these sexual advances. His extreme reaction to
seeing his mother flirting outrageously with Lord Grey after the incident
suggests this; 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.
Byron's proclivity for, and experimentation in, bisexuality may be a result of
his being sexually imprinted by both genders at an early age. Leslie
Marchand, one of Byron's biographers, controversially theorises that Lord
Grey's advances prompted Byron's later sexual liaisons with young men at
Harrow and Cambridge. Another biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, has posited
that Byron's true sexual yearnings were for adolescent males.
While he desired to be seen as sophisticated, uncaring and invincible, he
actually cared deeply what people thought of him. He believed his tendency
to melancholy and depression was inherited, and he wrote in 1821, "I am not
sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper & constitutional
depression of Spirits." He later earned a reputation as being extravagant,
courageous, unconventional, eccentric, flamboyant and controversial.He was
independent and given to extremes of temper; on at least one trip, his
travelling companions were so puzzled by his mood swings they thought he
was mentally ill.
In spite of these difficulties and eccentricties, Byron was noted for the
extreme loyalty he inspired among his friends.
Education and Early Loves
Byron received his early formal education at Aberdeen Grammar School, and
in August 1799, entered the school of Dr. William Glennie, in Dulwich. Placed
under the care of a Dr. Bailey, he was encouraged to exercise in moderation,
but could not restrain himself from "violent" bouts in an attempt to
overcompensate for his deformed foot. His mother interfered with his
studies, often withdrawing him from school, with the result that he lacked
discipline and his classical studies were neglected.
In 1801 he was sent to Harrow, where he remained until July 1805. An
undistinguished student and an unskilled cricketeer, he did represent the
school during the very first Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lord's in 1805.
His lack of moderation was not just restricted to physical exercise. Byron fell
in love with Mary Chaworth, whom he met while at school, 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." In Byron's later memoirs, "Mary Chaworth is portrayed as the
first object of his adult sexual feelings."
Byron finally returned in January 1804, 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)." The most enduring of those was with
John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare — four years Byron's junior — whom he
was to meet unexpectedly many years later in Italy (1821). 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".
"Ah! Sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,
Which whispers friendship will be doubly dear
To one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam,
And seek abroad, the love denied at home."
The following autumn he attended Trinity College, Cambridge., 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
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attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him for
ever." In his memory Byron composed Thyrza, a series of elegies.
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) against convicted or even suspected
offenders. 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.Also while at Cambridge he
formed lifelong friendships with men such as John Cam Hobhouse and
Francis Hodgson, a Fellow at King's College, with whom he corresponded on
literary and other matters until the end of his life.
Physical Appearance
Byron's adult height was about 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 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
curlpapers
in his hair at night. He was athletic, being a competent boxer and
horserider
and an excellent swimmer.
Byron and other writers, such as his friend Hobhouse, described his eating
habits in detail. At the time he entered Cambridge, he went on a strict diet to
control his weight. He also exercised a great deal, and at that time wore a
great number of clothes to cause himself to perspire. For most of his life he
was a vegetarian, and often lived for days on dry biscuits and white wine.
Occasionally he would eat large helpings of meat and desserts, after which
he would purge himself. Although he is described by Galt and others as
having a predilection for "violent" exercise, Hobhouse makes the excuse that
the pain in his deformed foot made physical activity difficult, and his weight
problem was the result.
Early Career
While not at school or college, Byron lived with his mother at Burgage Manor
in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in some antagonism. While there, he
cultivated friendships with Elizabeth 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 14. However, it was promptly recalled and burned on the
advice of his friend, the Reverend Thomas Beecher, on account of its more
amorous verses, particularly the poem To Mary.
Hours of Idleness, which collected many of the previous poems, along with
more recent compositions, was the culminating book. The savage,
anonymous criticism this received (now known to be the work of Henry Peter
Brougham) in the Edinburgh Review prompted his first major satire, English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). It was put into the hands of his relation
R.C. Dallas requesting him to "...get it published without his name" Dallas
gives a large series of changes and alterations, as well as the reasoning for
some of them. He also states that Byron had originally intended to prefix an
argument to this poem, and Dallas quotes it. Although the work was
published anonymously, by April, Dallas is writing that "you are already
pretty generally known to be the author." The work so upset some of his
critics they challenged Byron to a duel; over time, in subsequent editions, it
became a mark of prestige to be the target of Byron's pen.
After his return from his travels, he again entrusted Dallas as his literary
agent to publish his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which Byron thought of
little account. The first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were
published in 1812, and were received with acclaim. In his own words, "I
awoke one morning and found myself famous". He followed up his 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, A Tale. About
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the same time, he began his intimacy with his future biographer, Thomas
Moore.
Personal life
First travels to the East
Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, due to what his mother
termed a "reckless disregard for money". She lived at Newstead during this
time, in fear of her son's creditors.
He had planned to spend early 1808 cruising with his cousin George
Bettesworth, who was captain of the 32gun
frigate HMS Tartar.
Bettesworth's unfortunate death at the Battle of Alvøen in May 1808 made
that impossible.
From 1809 to 1811, Byron went on the Grand Tour, then customary for a
young nobleman. The Napoleonic Wars forced him to avoid most of Europe,
and he instead turned to the Mediterranean. Correspondence among his
circle of Cambridge friends also suggests that a key motive was the hope of
homosexual experience, and other theories saying that he was worried about
a possible dalliance with the married Mary Chaworth, his former love (the
subject of his poem from this time, "To a Lady: On Being Asked My Reason
for Quitting England in the Spring"). Attraction to the Levant was probably a
motive in itself; he had read about the Ottoman and Persian lands as a child,
was attracted to Islam (especially Sufi mysticism), and later wrote, “With
these countries, and events connected with them, all my really poetical
feelings begin and end." He travelled from England over Portugal, Spain and
the Mediterranean to Albania and spent time at the court of Ali Pasha of
Ioannina, and in Athens. For most of the trip, he had a travelling companion
in his friend John Cam Hobhouse. Many of these letters are referred to with
details in Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron.
Byron began his trip in Portugal from where he wrote a letter to his friend
Mr. Hodgson in which he describes his mastery of the Portuguese language,
consisting mainly of swearing and insults. Byron particularly enjoyed his stay
in Sintra that is described in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as "glorious Eden".
From Lisbon he travelled overland to Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz,
Gibraltar and from there by sea on to Malta and Greece.
While in Athens, Byron met Nicolò Giraud, who became quite close and
taught him Italian. It was also presumed that the two had an intimate
relationship involving a sexual affair. Byron sent Giraud to school at a
monastery in Malta and bequeathed him a sizeable sum of seven thousand
pounds sterling. The will, however, was later cancelled. In 1810 in Athens
Byron wrote Maid of Athens, ere we part for a 12yearold
girl, Teresa Makri
[1798–1875], and reportedly offered £500 for her. The offer was not
accepted.
Byron made his way to Smyrna where he and Hobhouse cadged a ride to
Constantinople on HMS Salsette. While Salsette was anchored awaiting
Ottoman permission to dock at the city, on 3 May 1810 Byron and Lieutenant
Ekenhead, of Salsette's marines, swam the Hellespont. Byron
commemorated this feat in the second canto of Don Juan. He returned to
England from Malta in June 1813 aboard HMS Volage.
Affairs and Scandals
In 1812, Byron embarked on a wellpublicised
affair with the married Lady
Caroline Lamb that shocked the British public. Byron eventually broke off the
relationship and moved swiftly on to others (such as that with Lady Oxford),
but Lamb never entirely recovered, pursuing him even after he tired of her.
She was emotionally disturbed, and lost so much weight that Byron cruelly
commented to her motherinlaw,
his friend Lady Melbourne, that he was
"haunted by a skeleton". She began to call on him at home, sometimes
dressed in disguise as a page boy, at a time when such an act could ruin
both of them socially. One day, during such a visit, she wrote on a book at
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his desk, "Remember me!" As a retort, Byron wrote a poem entitled
Remember Thee! Remember Thee! which concludes with the line "Thou false
to him, thou fiend to me".
As a child, Byron had seen little of his halfsister
Augusta Leigh; in
adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has been interpreted
by some as incestuous, and by others as innocent. Augusta (who was
married) gave birth on 15 April 1814 to her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora
Leigh.
Eventually Byron began to court Lady Caroline's cousin Anne Isabella
Milbanke ("Annabella"), who refused his first proposal of marriage but later
accepted him. Milbanke was a highly moral woman, intelligent and
mathematically gifted; she was also an heiress. They married at Seaham
Hall, County Durham, on 2 January 1815. The marriage proved unhappy. He
treated her poorly. They had a daughter (Augusta Ada). On 16 January
1816, Lady Byron left him, taking Ada with her. On 21 April, Byron signed
the Deed of Separation. Rumours of marital violence, adultery with
actresses, incest with Augusta Leigh, and sodomy were circulated, assisted
by a jealous Lady Caroline. In a letter, Augusta quoted him as saying: "Even
to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man from which
he can never recover."
Later Years
After this breakup
of his domestic life, Byron again left England, and, as it
turned out, it was forever. He passed 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, the young, brilliant, and
handsome John William Polidori. There Byron befriended the poet Percy
Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's future wife Mary Godwin. He was also joined
by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in
London.
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 was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's,
"Fragment of a Novel", to produce The Vampyre, the progenitor of the
romantic vampire genre. Byron's story fragment was published as a
postscript to Mazeppa; he also wrote the third canto of Childe Harold. Byron
wintered in Venice, pausing his travels when he fell in love with Marianna
Segati, in whose Venice house he was lodging, and who was soon replaced
by 22yearold
Margarita Cogni; both women were married. Cogni could not
read or write, and she left her husband to move into Byron's Venice house.
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.
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 and
published Manfred, Cain and The Deformed Transformed. The first five
cantos of Don Juan were written between 1818 and 1820, during which
period he made the acquaintance of the young Countess Guiccioli, who found
her first love in Byron, who in turn asked her to elope with him. It was about
this time that he received a visit from Thomas Moore, to whom he confided
his autobiography or "life and adventures", which Moore, Hobhouse, and
Byron's publisher, John Murray, burned in 1824, a month after Byron's
death.
Children
Byron had a child, The Hon. Augusta Ada Byron ("Ada", later Countess of
Lovelace), in 1815 with Annabella Byron, Lady Byron (née Anne Isabella
Milbanke, or "Annabella"), later Lady Wentworth. Ada Lovelace, notable in
her own right, collaborated with Charles Babbage on the analytical engine, a
predecessor to modern computers. She is recognised as the world's first
programmer.
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He also had an illegitimate child in 1817, Clara Allegra Byron, with Claire
Clairmont, stepsister of Mary Shelley and stepdaughter of Political Justice
and Caleb Williams writer, William Godwin.
Allegra is not entitled to the style "The Hon." as is usually given to the
daughter of barons, since she was illegitimate. Born in Bath in 1817, Allegra
lived with Byron for a few months in Venice; he refused to allow an
Englishwoman caring for the girl to adopt her, and objected to her being
raised in the Shelleys' household. He wished for her to be brought up
Catholic and not marry an Englishman. He made arrangements for her to
inherit 5,000 lira upon marriage, or when she reached the age of 21,
provided she did not marry a native of Britain. However, the girl died aged
five of a fever in Bagna Cavallo, Italy while Byron was in Pisa; he was deeply
upset by the news. He had Allegra's body sent back to England to be buried
at his old school, Harrow, because Protestants could not be buried in
consecrated ground in Catholic countries. At one time he himself had wanted
to be buried at Harrow. Byron was indifferent towards Allegra's mother,
Claire Clairmont.
Although it cannot be proved, some attest that Augusta Leigh's child,
Elizabeth Medora Leigh, was fathered by Byron.
It is thought that Lord Byron had a son by a maid he employed at Newstead
named Lucy. A letter of his to John Hanson from Newstead Abbey, dated 17
January 1809, refers to the situation: "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." The letter may be found in many editions
of Byron's letters, such as Marchand's 1982 Byron's Letters and Journals. The
poem "To My Son" may be about this child; however, the dating gives
difficulties; some editors attribute the poem to a date two years earlier than
the letter.
Political Career
Byron first took his seat in the House of Lords 13 Mar 1809, but left London
on 11 Jun 1809 for the Continent A strong advocate of social reform, he
received particular praise as one of the few Parliamentary defenders of the
Luddites: specifically, he was against a death penalty for Luddite "frame
breakers" in Nottinghamshire, who destroyed textile machines that were
putting them out of work. His first speech before the Lords was loaded with
sarcastic references to the "benefits" of automation, which he saw as
producing inferior material as well as putting people out of work. He said
later that he "spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest
impudence", and thought he came across as "a bit theatrical". The full text of
the speech, which he had previously written out, were presented to Dallas in
manuscript form and he quotes it in his work. In another Parliamentary
speech he expressed opposition to the established religion because it was
unfair to people of other faiths. 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. Examples of poems in which he
attacked his political opponents include Wellington: The Best of the
CutThroats
(1819); and The Intellectual Eunuch Castlereagh (1818).
Life Abroad
Reasons for His Departure
Ultimately, Byron resolved to escape the censure of British society (due to
allegations of sodomy and incest) by living abroad, thereby freeing himself of
the need to conceal his sexual interests (MacCarthy pp. 86, 314). Byron left
England in 1816 and did not return for the last eight years of his life, even to
bury his daughter.
The Armenians in Venice
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In 1816, Byron visited Saint Lazarus Island in Venice, where he acquainted
himself with Armenian culture with the help of the abbots belonging to the
Mechitarist Order. With the help of Father H. Avgerian, he learned the
Armenian language, and attended many seminars about language and
history. He wrote English Grammar and Armenian (Qerakanutyun
angghiakan yev hayeren) in 1817, and Armenian Grammar and English
(Qerakanutyun hayeren yev angghiakan) in 1819, where he included
quotations from classical and modern Armenian. Byron also participated in
the compilation of the English Armenian dictionary (Barraran angghieren yev
hayeren, 1821) and wrote the preface in which he explained the relationship
of the Armenians with and the oppression of the Turkish "pashas" and the
Persian satraps, and their struggle of liberation. His two main translations
are the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, two chapters of Movses
Khorenatsi's History of Armenia and sections of Nerses of Lambron's
Orations. His fascination was so great that he even considered a replacement
of the Cain story of the Bible with that of the legend of Armenian patriarch
Haik. He may be credited with the birth of Armenology and its propagation.
His profound lyricism and ideological courage has inspired many Armenian
poets, the likes of Ghevond Alishan, Smbat Shahaziz, Hovhannes Tumanyan,
Ruben Vorberian and others.
In Italy and Greece
The Byron's cave in Portovenere, Italy, called in his honour, because in this
place that drew inspiration and meditation for his literary works
From 1821 to 1822, he finished Cantos 6–12 of Don Juan at Pisa, and in the
same year he joined with
Leigh
Hunt and
Percy Bysshe
Shelley in starting a shortlived
newspaper, The Liberal, in the first
number of which appeared The Vision of Judgment. 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 Trelawney; 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."
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 Daniel Roberts (Royal Navy officer), to design and construct the
boat. Named the Bolivar, it was later sold to Charles John Gardiner, 1st Earl
of Blessington, and Marguerite, Countess of Blessington when Byron left for
Greece in 1823. Byron attended the funeral of Shelley, which was
orchestrated by Trelawny after Williams and Shelley drowned in a boating
accident on 8 July 1822. His last Italian home was Genoa, where he was still
accompanied by the Countess Guiccioli, and the Blessingtons; providing the
material for Lady Blessington’s work: Conversations with Lord Byron, an
important text in the reception of Byron in the period immediately after his
death.
Byron was living in Genoa, when in 1823, while growing bored with his life
there, he accepted overtures for his support from representatives of the
movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. With the
assistance of his banker and Captain Roberts, Byron chartered the Brig
Hercules to take him to Greece. On 16 July, Byron left Genoa arriving at
Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands on 4 August. His voyage is covered in detail in
Sailing with Byron from Genoa to Cephalonia. There is a mystical 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
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venture into the Mediterranean. "The Hercules was age 37 when on 21
September 1852, her life ended when she went aground near Hartlepool,
only 25 miles south of Sunderland, where in 1815, her keel was laid; Byron’s
keel was laid nine months before his official birth date, 22 January 1788;
therefore in shipyears,
he was age 37, when he died in Missolonghi." Byron
spent £4000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet, then sailed for
Missolonghi in western Greece, arriving on 29 December, to join Alexandros
Mavrokordatos, a Greek politician with military power. During this time,
Byron pursued his Greek page, Lukas Chalandritsanos, but the affections
went unrequited. When the famous Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen heard about
Byron's heroics in Greece, he voluntarily resculpted his earlier bust of Byron
in Greek marble.
Death
Mavrokordatos and Byron planned to attack the Turkishheld
fortress of
Lepanto, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. Byron employed a firemaster
to prepare artillery and took part of the rebel army under his own command,
despite his lack of military experience, but before the expedition could sail,
on 15 February 1824, he fell ill, and the usual remedy of bloodletting
weakened him further. He made a partial recovery, but in early April he
caught a violent cold which therapeutic bleeding, insisted on by his doctors,
aggravated. It is suspected this treatment, carried out with unsterilised
medical instrumentation, may have caused him to develop sepsis. He
developed a violent fever, and died on 19 April. His physician at the time,
Dutch Julius van Millingen, was unable to prevent his death. It has been said
that had Byron lived and gone on to defeat the Ottomans, he might have
been declared King of Greece. However, contemporary scholars have found
such an outcome unlikely.
Post mortem
Alfred, Lord Tennyson would later recall the shocked reaction in Britain when
word was received of Byron's death. The Greeks mourned Lord Byron deeply,
and he became a hero. The national poet of Greece, Dionysios Solomos,
wrote a poem about the unexpected loss, named To the Death of Lord Byron.
..... ("Vyron"), the Greek form of "Byron", continues in popularity as a
masculine name in Greece, and a suburb of Athens is called Vyronas in his
honour.
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
Missolonghi. According to others, it was his lungs, which were placed in an
urn that was later lost when the city was sacked. His other remains were
sent to England for burial in Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused for
reason of "questionable morality". Huge crowds viewed his body as he lay in
state for two days in London. He is buried at the Church of St. Mary
Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
At her request, Ada Lovelace, 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. Byron's friends
raised the sum of 1,000 pounds to commission a statue of the writer;
Thorvaldsen offered to sculpt it for that amount. However, for ten years
after the statue was completed in 1834, most British institutions turned it
down, and it remained in storage. The statue was refused by the British
Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery.
Trinity College, Cambridge, finally placed the statue of Byron in its library.
In 1969, 145 years after Byron's death, a memorial to him was finally placed
in Westminster Abbey. The memorial had been lobbied for since 1907; 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."
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
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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.
On a very central area of Athens, Greece, outside the National Garden, is a
statue depicting Greece in the form of a woman crowning Byron. The statue
was made by the French HenriMichel
Chapu and Alexandre Falguière.
Upon his death, the barony passed to Byron's cousin George Anson Byron, a
career naval officer.
Poetic Works
Byron wrote prolifically. In 1832 his publisher, John Murray, released the
complete works in 14 duodecimo volumes, including a life by Thomas Moore.
Subsequent editions were released in 17 volumes, first published a year
later, in 1833.
Although Byron falls chronologically into the period most commonly
associated with Romantic poetry, much of his work looks back to the satiric
tradition of Alexander Pope and John Dryden.
Don Juan
Byron's magnum opus, Don Juan, a poem spanning 17 cantos, ranks as one
of the most important long poems published in England since John Milton's
Paradise Lost. The masterpiece, often called the epic of its time, has roots
deep in literary tradition and, although regarded by early Victorians as
somewhat shocking, equally involves itself with its own contemporary world
at all levels — social, political, literary and ideological.
Byron published the first two cantos anonymously in 1819 after disputes with
his regular publisher over the shocking nature of the poetry; by this time, he
had been a famous poet for seven years, and when he selfpublished
the
beginning cantos, they were well received in some quarters. It was then
released volume by volume through his regular publishing house. By 1822,
cautious acceptance by the public had turned to outrage, and Byron's
publisher refused to continue to publish the works. In Canto III of Don Juan,
Byron expresses his detestation for poets such as William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Byronic hero
The figure of the Byronic hero pervades much of his work, and Byron himself
is considered to epitomise many of the characteristics of this literary figure.
Scholars have traced the literary history of the Byronic hero from John
Milton, and many authors and artists of the Romantic movement show
Byron's influence during the 19th century and beyond, including Charlotte
and Emily Brontë. 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 unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence
or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a selfdestructive
manner. Finally,
Stendahl's hero Julien Sorel in The Red and the Black seems to have been
inspired by Don Juan. In Canto XI when Don Juan shoots the armed English
robber, the robber falls to the ground and mistakes Don Juan for a "bloody
Frenchman".
Parthenon marbles
Byron was a bitter opponent of Lord Elgin's removal of the Parthenon
marbles from Greece, and "reacted with fury" when Elgin's agent gave him a
tour of the Parthenon, during which he saw the missing friezes and metopes.
He penned a poem, The Curse of Minerva, to denounce Elgin's actions.
He enjoyed adventure, especially relating to the sea.
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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 Hellespont
Strait. This is often seen as the birth of the sport and pastime and to
commemorate it, the event is recreated every year as an open water
swimming event.
Celebrity
Byron is considered to be the first modernstyle
celebrity. His 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. His selfawareness
and personal promotion are seen as a
beginning to 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." While Byron first welcomed fame, he later turned
from it by going into voluntary exile from Britain.
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.
Although deep 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 which he ever carried out on his estate.
In his 1811 will, Byron requested that he be buried with him. The 26 verse
poem, Epitaph to a Dog, has become one of his bestknown
works, but a
draft of an 1830 letter by Hobhouse shows him to be the author, and that
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."
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.
During his lifetime, in addition to numerous dogs and horses, Byron kept a
fox, four monkeys, a parrot, five cats, an eagle, a crow, a crocodile, a falcon,
five peacocks, two guinea hens, an Egyptian crane, a badger, three geese, a
heron and a goat with a broken leg. Except for the horses, they all resided
indoors at his homes in England, Switzerland, Italy and Greece.
Lasting Influence
The refounding
of the Byron Society in 1971 reflects the fascination that
many people have for Byron and his work. This society has become very
active, publishing an annual journal. Today 36 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 or
America, although not as high as in his time, when he was widely thought to
be the greatest poet in the world. Byron has inspired works by Franz Liszt,
Hector Berlioz, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Giuseppe Verdi.
Depictions in Fiction and Film
Byron first appeared as a thinly disguised fictional character in his exlove
Lady Caroline Lamb's book Glenarvon, published in 1816.
The archetypal vampire character, notably Bram Stoker's Dracula, is based
on Byron. The gothic ideal of a decadent, pale and aristocratic individual who
enamors himself to whomever he meets, but who is perceived to have a dark
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and dangerous innerself
is a literary form derived from characteristations of
Byron. The image of a vampire portrayed as an aristocrat was created by
John Polidori, in "The Vampyre", during the summer of 1816 which he spent
in the company of Byron. The titled Count Dracula is a reprise of this
character.
Byron was the subject of a 1908 play Byron by Alicia Ramsey and its 1922
film adaptation A Prince of Lovers in which he was played by Howard Gaye.
Byron is the main character of the film Byron by the Greek film maker Nikos
Koundouros.
Byron's spirit is one of the title characters of the Ghosts of Albion books by
Amber Benson and Christopher Golden. John Crowley's book Lord Byron's
Novel: The Evening Land (2005) involves the rediscovery of a lost
manuscript by Lord Byron, as does Frederic Prokosch's The Missolonghi
Manuscript (1968).
Byron appears as a character in Tim Powers's time travel/alternative history
novels The Stress of Her Regard (1989) and The Anubis Gates (1983),
Walter Jon Williams's fantasy novella Wall, Stone Craft (1994), and also in
Susanna Clarke's alternative history Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004).
Byron appears as an immortal, still living in modern times, in the television
show Highlander: The Series in the fifth season episode The Modern
Prometheus, living as a decadent rock star.
Tom Holland, in his 1995 novel The Vampyre: Being the True Pilgrimage of
George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, romantically describes how Lord Byron
became a vampire during his first visit to Greece — a fictional transformation
that explains much of his subsequent behaviour towards family and friends,
and finds support in quotes from Byron poems and the diaries of John Cam
Hobhouse. It is written as though Byron is retelling part of his life to his
great greatgreatgreatgranddaughter.
He describes travelling in Greece,
Italy, Switzerland, meeting Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's death, and many
other events in life around that time. The Byron as vampire character returns
in the 1996 sequel Supping with Panthers.
Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley are portrayed in Roger Corman's final film
Frankenstein Unbound, where the time traveller Dr. Buchanan (played by
John Hurt) meets them as well as Victor von Frankenstein (played by Raúl
Juliá).
The Black Drama by Manly Wade Wellman, originally published in Weird
Tales, involves the rediscovery and production of a lost play by Byron (from
which Polidori's The Vampyre was plagiarised) by a man who purports to be
a descendant of the poet.
Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia revolves around a modern researcher's
attempts to find out what made Byron leave the country, while Howard
Brenton's play Bloody Poetry features Byron, in addition to Polidori, the
Shelleys and Claire Clairmont.
Television portrayals include a major 2003 BBC drama on Byron's life, an
appearance in the 2006 BBC drama, Beau Brummell: This Charming Man,
and minor appearances in Highlander: The Series (as well as the Shelleys),
Blackadder the Third, episode 60 (Darkling) of Star Trek: Voyager, and was
also parodied in the animated sketch series, Monkey Dust.
He makes an appearance in the alternative history novel The Difference
Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. In a Britain powered by the
massive, steamdriven,
mechanical computers invented by Charles Babbage,
he is leader of the Industrial Radical Party, eventually becoming Prime
Minister.
The events featuring the Shelleys' and Byron's relationship at the house
beside Lake Geneva in 1816 have been fictionalised in film at least three
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times.
A 1986 British production, Gothic, directed by Ken Russell, and starring
Gabriel Byrne as Byron.
A 1988 Spanish production, Rowing with the wind aka (Remando al viento),
starring Hugh Grant as Byron.
A 1988 U.S.A. production Haunted Summer. Adapted by Lewis John Carlino
from the speculative novel by Anne Edwards, starring Philip Anglim as Lord
Byron.
The brief prologue to Bride of Frankenstein includes Gavin Gordon as Byron,
begging Mary Shelley to tell the rest of her Frankenstein story.
Novelist Benjamin Markovits produced a trilogy about the life of Byron.
Imposture (2007) looked at the poet from the point of view of his friend and
doctor, John Polidori. A Quiet Adjustment (2008), is an account of Byron's
marriage that is more sympathetic to his wife, Annabella. Childish
Loves(2011) is a reimagining of Byron's lost memoirs, dealing with questions
about his childhood and sexual awakening.
Byron is portrayed as an immortal in the book, Divine Fire, by Melanie
Jackson.
In the comic thriller, Edward Trencom's Nose by Giles Milton, several of
Edward's ancestors are poisoned, along with Byron.
In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy episode "Ecto Cooler" (2005), the
episode opens with a quote from Don Juan. Byron's ghost appears to instruct
Billy on how to be cool.
In the novel The History of Lucy's Love Life in Ten and a Half Chapters, Lucy
Lyons uses a time machine to visit 1813 and meet her idol, Byron.
Byron is depicted in Tennessee William's play Camino Real.
Byron's life is the subject of the 2003 made for television movie Byron
starring Jonny Lee Miller.
Byron is depicted as the villain/antagonist in the novel Jane Bites Back
written by Michael Thomas Ford, published by Ballantine Books, 2010. A
novel based on the premise that Jane Austen (and Lord Byron) are Vampires
living in the modern day literary world.
The play A Year Without A Summer by Brad C. Hodson is about Byron,
Polidori, the Shelleys, and Claire Clairmont and the famous summer of 1816
at the Villa Diodati. As opposed to other works dealing with the same period,
the play is more a biopic dealing with Byron's divorce and exile from
England, than with the Shelleys' lives.
Lawrence Durrell wrote a poem called Byron as a lyrical soliloquy; it was first
published in 1944.
Susanna Roxman's Allegra in her 1996 collection Broken Angels (Dionysia
Press, Edinburgh) is a poem about Byron's daughter by Claire Clairmont. In
this text, Byron is referred to as "Papa".
Dan Chapman's 2010 vampire novella The Postmodern Malady of Dr. Peter
Hudson begins at the time of Lord Byron's death and uses biographical
information about him in the construction of its title character. It also directly
quotes some of his work.
Stephanie Barron's series of Jane Austen Mysteries has Lord Byron a suspect
of murder in the 2010 book, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron.
He appears in a parallel story line in the novel The Fire by Katherine Neville.
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Byron is also a minor character in the ninth novel of L.A. Meyer's Bloody Jack
series The Mark of the Golden Dragon.
Musical settings of, or music inspired by, poems by Byron
1820 – William Crathern: My Boat is On the Shore (1820), a setting for voice
and piano of words from the poem To Thomas More written by Byron in 1817
c. 1820–1860 – Carl Loewe: 24 songs
1833 – Gaetano Donizetti: Parisina, opera
1834 – Hector Berlioz: Harold en Italie, symphony in four movements for
viola and orchestra
1835 – Gaetano Donizetti: Marino Faliero, opera
1844 – Hector Berlioz: Le Corsaire overture (possibly also inspired by James
Fenimore Cooper's Red Rover as the original title is Le Corsaire Rouge)
1844 – Giuseppe Verdi: I due Foscari, opera in three acts
1848 – Giuseppe Verdi: Il corsaro, opera in three acts
1849 – Robert Schumann: Overture and incidental music to Manfred
1849–54 – Franz Liszt: Tasso, Lamento e trionfo, symphonic poem
1885 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony in B minor, Op. 58
1896 – Hugo Wolf: Vier Gedichte nach Heine, Shakespeare und Lord Byron
for voice and piano: 3. Sonne der Schlummerlosen 4. Keine gleicht von allen
Schönen
1916 – Pietro Mascagni: Parisina, opera in four acts
1934 – Germaine Tailleferre: Two Poems of Lord Byron (1. Sometimes in
moments... 2. 'Tis Done I heard it in my dreams... for Voice and Piano
(Tailleferre's only setting of English language texts)
1942 – Arnold Schoenberg: Ode to Napoleon for reciter, string quartet and
piano
mid 1970s: Arion Quinn: She Walks in Beauty
1984 – David Bowie: Music video for Blue Jean and short promotional video
for Blue Jean, Jazzin' for Blue Jean features him playing a rock star named
Screaming Lord Byron (cf. Screaming Lord Sutch). His attire for the rock star
mimics that of Lord Byron's in the portrait by Thomas Phillips.
1997 – Solefald: When the Moon is on the Wave
2002 – Ariella Uliano: So We'll Go No More A'Roving
2002 – Warren Zevon: Lord Byron's Luggage
2004 – Leonard Cohen: No More ARoving
2005 – Cockfighter (band): Destruction
2006 – Kris Delmhorst: We'll Go No More ARoving
2006 – Cradle Of Filth: The Byronic Man featuring HIM's Ville Valo
2008 – ALPHA 60: The rock, the vulture, and the chain
2008 – Schiller (band) has a song called "Nacht" with Ben Becker on its
album, Sehnsucht (Schiller album), which has video on Youtube. The lyrics
are a shortened version of a poem in German called Die Seele that is
attributed to Lord Byron. It appears to be a translation of the Byron poem,
"When coldness wraps this suffering clay" from the collection, Hebrew
Melodies. The Identity of the translator/author of Die Seele is unknown
although the text may be from "Lord Byrons Werke In sechs Bänden"
translated by Otto Gildemeister, 3rd Volume, Fifth Edition, Berlin 1903
(pages 134–135).
2011 – Agustí Charles: Lord Byron. Un estiu sense estiu. Opera en dos actes
(Lord Byron. A summer without a summer. Opera in two actes). Libretto in
Catalan by Marc Rosich, world premiere at Staatstheater Darmstadt, March
2011.
Perth rock band Eleventh He Reaches London are named in reference to the
eleventh canto of Don Juan, in which Don Juan arrives in London. Their debut
album, The Good Fight for Harmony also featured a track entitled "What
Would Don Juan Do?"
Works:
Hours of Idleness (1807)
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I & II (1812)
The Giaour (1813)
The Bride of Abydos (1813)
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The Corsair (1814)
Lara, A Tale (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) (text on Wikisource)
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 Age of Bronze (1823)
The Island (1823)
The Deformed Transformed (1824)
Poems
The First Kiss of Love (1806)
Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination (1806)
To a Beautiful Quaker (1807)
The Cornelian (1807)
Lines Addressed to a Young Lady (1807)
Lachin y Garr (1807)
Epitaph to a Dog (1808)
Maid of Athens, ere we part (1810)
She Walks in Beauty (1814)
My Soul is Dark (1815)
When We Two Parted (1817)
Love's Last Adieu
So, we'll go no more a roving (1830)
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