Lord Byron

, date unknown Family George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788, on Holles Street in London; His family in the English Midlands can be traced back without interruption to Ralph de Buran, who arrived in England with William the Conqueror in the 11th century. His land holdings are listed in the Domesday Book of 1086. Byron was the only child of Captain John 'Jack' Byron and his second wife, Catherine Gordon (of the Clan Gordon), heiress of the Gight estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Byron's paternal grandparents were Vice Admiral John Byron and Sophia Trevanion. Having survived a shipwreck as a teenage midshipman, Byron's grandfather set a new speed record for circumnavigating the globe. After he became embroiled in a tempestuous voyage during the American War of Independence, he became nicknamed 'Foul-Weather Jack' Byron by the press. Byron's father had previously been somewhat scandalously married to Amelia Osborne, 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. The marriage was not a happy one, and their first two children – Sophia Georgina, and an unnamed boy – died in infancy. Amelia herself died in 1784 almost exactly a year after the birth of their third child, the poet's half-sister Augusta Mary. 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. Nineteenth-century sources blamed Jack's own "brutal and vicious" treatment of her. Jack then married Catherine Gordon of Gight on 13 May 1785, by all accounts only for her fortune. 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. In the space of two years, the large estate, worth some £23,500 (), was squandered, leaving the former heiress with an annual income in trust of only £150 (). Byron's mother moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790, and Byron spent part of his childhood there. but the couple quickly separated. Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy, Described by some biographers as "a woman without judgment or self-command", Catherine allegedly 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, so that it was 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". However, Byron's biographer, Doris Langley Moore, in her 1974 book Accounts Rendered, paints a more sympathetic view of Mrs Byron as a staunch supporter of her son, who sacrificed her own precarious finances to keep him in luxury at Harrow and Cambridge. Langley-Moore questions the 19th-century biographer John Galt's claim that she over-indulged in alcohol. 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 Royal Warrant, enabling him to "take and use the surname of Noel only" and to "subscribe the said surname of Noel before all titles of honour". From that point, he signed himself "Noel Byron", the usual signature of a peer being merely the name of the peerage, in this case simply "Byron". Some have speculated that he did this so that his initials would read "N.B.", mimicking those of his hero, Napoleon. Lady Byron eventually succeeded to the Barony of Wentworth, becoming "Lady Wentworth". ==Education==

Byron received his early formal education at Aberdeen Grammar School from January 1795 until his move back to England as a 10-year-old. In August 1799 he 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 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. Byron was sent to Harrow School in 1801, and remained there until July 1805. His lack of moderation was not restricted to physical exercise. Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth, whom he met while at school, 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. In later years, he described the affair as "a violent, though love and passion". This statement, however, needs to be read in the context of hardening public attitudes towards homosexuality in England and the sanctions, including public hanging, imposed upon 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. The poem "The Cornelian" was written about the cornelian that Byron had received from Edleston. Byron spent three years at Trinity College, engaging in boxing, horse riding, gambling, and sexual escapades. While at the University of Cambridge, he formed lifelong friendships with men such as John Cam Hobhouse, who initiated him into the Cambridge Whig Club, which endorsed liberal politics, and Francis Hodgson, a Fellow at King's College, with whom he corresponded on literary and other matters until the end of his life. ==Career==

Early career While not at school or college, Byron lived at his mother's residence, Burgage Manor in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. 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. However, not all copies were destroyed, and in fact one copy was kept by Reverend Thomas Becher and later owned by the bibliophile Thomas J. Wise and one was kept by John Pigot who removed the offending pages. There are only four known copies of the 1806 publication that survived the burning. 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 Henry Peter Brougham) in the Edinburgh Review prompted Byron to compose his first major satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Byron put it into the hands of his relative Robert Charles Dallas, and asked him to "...get it published without his name." Alexander Dallas suggested a large number of changes to the manuscript, and provided the reasoning for some of them. Dallas also stated that Byron had originally intended to prefix an argument to this poem, which Dallas quoted. Although it was published anonymously, that April Dallas wrote that "you are already pretty generally known to be the author". The work so upset some of his critics that 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. In Byron's own words, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." 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. First travels to the East , Albania Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, owing to what his mother termed a "reckless disregard for money". Byron went on the Grand Tour, then a customary part of the education of young noblemen. He travelled with Hobhouse for the first year, and his entourage of servants included Byron's trustworthy valet, William Fletcher. Hobhouse and Byron often made Fletcher the butt of their humour. The Napoleonic Wars forced Byron to avoid touring in most of Europe; he instead turned to the Mediterranean. His journey enabled him to avoid his creditors and to meet up with a former love, Mary Chaworth, the subject of his poem "To a Lady: On Being Asked My Reason for Quitting England in the Spring". 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. 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. England 1811–1816 After the publication of the first two cantos of ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'' (1812), Byron became a celebrity. "He rapidly became the most brilliant star in the dazzling world of Regency London. He was sought after at every society venue, elected to several exclusive clubs, and frequented the most fashionable London drawing-rooms." However, in 1813 he met for the first time in four years his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Rumours of incest surrounded the pair; Augusta's daughter Medora (b. 1814) was suspected to have been Byron's child. and others made their marital life a misery. Annabella considered Byron insane, and in January 1816 she left him, taking their daughter, and began proceedings for a legal separation. Their separation was made legal in a private settlement in March 1816. The scandal of the separation, the rumours about Augusta, and ever-increasing debts forced him to leave England in April 1816, never to return. ==Life abroad (1816–1824)==

Switzerland and the Shelleys File:Portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Curran, 1819.jpg|Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819 File:Claire Clairmont, by Amelia Curran.jpg|Claire Clairmont, 1819 File:Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Rothwell.tif|Mary Shelley, 1840 File:John William Polidori by F.G. Gainsford.jpg|John Polidori, 1816 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, and never returned. Despite his dying wishes, 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 had 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. 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. '' 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, the progenitor of the Romantic vampire genre. The Vampyre was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron, "A Fragment". 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 Margherita 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. and attended many seminars about language and history. In 1817, he co-authored Grammar English and Armenian, an English textbook written by Aucher and corrected by Byron, and A Grammar Armenian and English in 1819, a project he initiated of a grammar of Classical Armenian for English-speakers, where he included quotations from classical and modern Armenian. 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. 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. After considering migrating to Venezuela or to the Cape Colony, Byron finally decided to leave Venice for Ravenna. Because of his love for the local aristocratic, young, newly married Teresa Guiccioli, Byron lived in Ravenna from 1819 to 1821. Here he continued Don Juan and wrote the Ravenna Diary and My Dictionary and Recollections. Around this time he received visits from Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as from Thomas Moore, to whom he confided his autobiography or "life and adventures", which Moore, Hobhouse, and Byron's publisher, John Murray, Of Byron's lifestyle in Ravenna more is known from Shelley, who documented some of its more colourful aspects in a letter: , Italy, named in Byron's honour because, according to local legend, he meditated here and drew inspiration from this place for his literary works and Alexandre Falguière depicting Greece in the form of a female figure crowning Lord Byron in the National Park in Athens (Άγαλμα Λόρδου Βύρωνος) 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 Leigh Hunt and Shelley in starting a short-lived newspaper, The Liberal, in whose first number The Vision of Judgment appeared. 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." 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 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 beachside cremation 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 in Genoa, where he stayed at Villa Saluzzo Bombrini. On 29 September he challenged Edward John Trelawny to swim, from Bolivar to San Terenzo and back. The poet lost, partly due to illness, and was forced to stay four days in a hovel in Lerici, suffering from all kinds of pain. While living in Genoa he was accompanied by the Countess Guiccioli, and the Blessingtons. Lady Blessington based much of the material in her book, Conversations with Lord Byron, on the time spent together there. This book became an important biographical text about Byron's life just prior to his death. Ottoman Greece '' by Thomas Phillips, 1813. Venizelos Mansion, Athens (the British Ambassador's residence). 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 Ottoman Empire. At first, Byron did not wish to leave his 22-year-old mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, who had abandoned her husband to live with him. But ultimately Guiccioli's father, Count Gamba, was allowed to leave his exile in the Romagna under the condition that his daughter return to him, without Byron. At the same time that the philhellene, Edward Blaquiere, was attempting to recruit him, Byron was confused as to what he was supposed to do in Greece, writing: "Blaquiere seemed to think that I might be of some use—even here;—though what he did not exactly specify". With the assistance of his banker and Captain Daniel Roberts, Byron chartered the brig Hercules to take him to Greece. When Byron left Genoa, it caused "passionate grief" from Guiccioli, who wept openly as he sailed away. The Hercules was forced to return to port shortly afterwards. When it set sail for the final time, Guiccioli had already left Genoa. On 16 July, Byron left Genoa, arriving at Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands on 4 August. His voyage is covered in detail in Donald Prell's Sailing with Byron from Genoa to Cephalonia. 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 had 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. Byron initially stayed on the island of Kefalonia, where he was besieged by agents of the rival Greek factions, all of whom wanted to recruit Byron for their own cause. The Ionian islands, of which Kefalonia is one, were under British rule until 1864. Byron spent £4,000 () of his own money to refit the Greek fleet. When Byron travelled to the mainland of Greece on the night of 28 December 1823, Byron's ship was surprised by an Ottoman warship, which did not attack his ship, as the Ottoman captain mistook Byron's boat for a fireship. To avoid the Ottoman Navy, which he encountered several times on his voyage, Byron was forced to take a roundabout route and only reached Missolonghi on 5 January 1824. 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. Byron gave the Souliotes some £6,000. 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. 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. Byron wrote in a note to himself: 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. 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". 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. In today's money, Byron would have been a millionaire many times over. News that a fabulously wealthy British aristocrat, known for his financial generosity, had arrived in Greece made Byron the object of much solicitation in that desperately poor country. Byron wrote to his business agent in England, "I should not like to give the Greeks but a half helping hand", saying he would have wanted to spend his entire fortune on Greek freedom. Byron found himself besieged by various people, both Greek and foreign, who tried to persuade him to open his pocketbook for support. By the end of March 1824, the so-called "Byron brigade" of 30 philhellene officers and exactly 231 men had been formed, paid for entirely by Byron. Leadership of the Greek cause in the Roumeli region was divided between two rival leaders: a former Klepht (bandit), Odysseas Androutsos; and a wealthy Phanariot Prince, Alexandros Mavrokordatos. Byron used his prestige to attempt to persuade the two rival leaders to come together to focus on defeating the Ottomans. At the same time, other leaders of the Greek factions like Petrobey Mavromichalis and Theodoros Kolokotronis wrote letters to Byron telling him to disregard all of the Roumeliot leaders and to come to their respective areas in the Peloponnese. This drove Byron to distraction; he complained that the Greeks were hopelessly disunited and spent more time feuding with each other than trying to win independence. Byron's friend Edward John Trelawny had aligned himself with Androutsos, who ruled Athens, and was now pressing for Byron to break with Mavrokordatos in favour of backing the rival Androutsos. Androutsos, having won over Trelawny to his cause, was now anxious to persuade Byron to put his wealth behind his claim to be the leader of Greece. Byron wrote with disgust about how one of the Greek captains, former Klepht Georgios Karaiskakis, attacked Missolonghi on 3 April 1824 with some 150 men supported by the Souliotes as he was unhappy with Mavrokordatos's leadership, which led to a brief bout of inter-Greek fighting before Karaiskakis was chased away by 6 April. 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. ==Death==

(). The sheet covers Byron's misshapen right foot. 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. 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. Alfred Tennyson would later recall the shocked reaction in Britain when word was received of Byron's death. The national poet of Greece, Dionysios Solomos, wrote a poem about the unexpected loss, named To the Death of Lord Byron. A suburb of Athens was named 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. His other remains were sent to England, accompanied by his faithful manservant, "Tita", for burial in Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused for reason of "questionable morality". Huge crowds viewed his coffin as he lay in state for two days at number 25 Great George Street, Westminster. A marble slab given by the King of Greece is laid directly above Byron's grave. His daughter Ada Lovelace was later buried beside him. Byron's friends raised £1,000 to commission a statue of him. Thorvaldsen offered to sculpt it for that amount. The memorial had been lobbied for since 1907, when The New York Times wrote: 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. 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. In 2008, The Hellenic Parliament designated 19 April, the anniversary of Byron's death, as the "Day of Philhellenism and International Solidarity". Upon his death, the barony passed to Byron's cousin George Anson Byron, a career naval officer. ==Personal life==

Relationships and scandals File:Portrait of Lady Caroline Lamb.jpg|Lady Caroline Lamb File:Jane elizabeth countess-of-oxford1797 john hoppner.jpg|Jane Elizabeth Scott "Lady Oxford" File:Hon. Augusta Leigh.jpg|Augusta Leigh File:Annabella Byron (1792-1860).jpg|Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1812 by Charles Hayter File:Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli.gif|Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb that shocked the British public. She had spurned the attention of the poet on their first meeting, giving Byron what became his lasting epitaph when she famously described him as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". This did not prevent her from pursuing him. She began to stalk him, calling on him at home, sometimes dressed in disguise as a pageboy, 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 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. Sexuality Byron described his first intense romantic feelings at the age of seven for his distant cousin Mary Duff: Byron also became attached to Margaret Parker, another distant cousin. Crompton states: "What was not understood in Byron's own century (except by a tiny circle of his associates) was that Byron was bisexual". Another biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, has posited that Byron's true sexual yearnings were for adolescent males. While in Athens, Byron met 14-year-old Nicolo Giraud, who taught him Italian. Byron arranged to have Giraud enrolled in school at a monastery in Malta, and wrote him into his will, with a bequest of £7,000 (about £ in ). That will, however, was later cancelled. Byron wrote to Hobhouse from Athens, "I am tired of pl & opt Cs, the last thing I could be tired of." Opt Cs refers to a quote from ''Petronius' Satyricon,'' "," "complete intercourse to one's heart's desire". Allegedly, Byron used this phrase as a code by which he communicated his homosexual Greek adventures to John Hobhouse in England: Emily A. Bernhard Jackson recalls that "Byron's early code for sex with a boy" was "Plen(um) and optabil(em) coit(um)". Children File:Emedora.jpg|alt=Seated woman, looking toward her left at artist, perhaps when interrupted while reading|Elizabeth Medora Leigh (1814–1849) File:Ada Lovelace 1838.jpg|alt=Formal profile of standing woman|Ada, Countess of Lovelace(1815–1852) File:Allegra Byron.jpg|alt=Young, smiling child|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." 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." 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, The Hon. Augusta Ada Byron ("Ada", later Countess of Lovelace), in 1815, by his wife Annabella Byron, Lady Byron (née Anne Isabella Milbanke, or "Annabella"), later Lady Wentworth. Lovelace, notable in her own right, collaborated with Charles Babbage on the analytical engine, a predecessor to modern computers. She is recognised as one of the world's first computer programmers. He also had an extramarital child in 1817, Clara Allegra Byron, with Claire Clairmont, stepsister of Mary Shelley and stepdaughter of William Godwin, writer of Political Justice and Caleb Williams. Allegra is not entitled to the style "The Hon." as is usually given to the daughter of barons, since she was born outside of his marriage. 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. During his time in Greece, Byron took interest in a Turkish Muslim nine-year-old girl called Hato or Hatagée whom 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 Teresa Guiccioli, or to his half-sister Augusta, or to his estranged wife as a playmate for his daughter Ada. Ultimately, Byron sent both Hato and her mother to Cephalonia to be cared for temporarily by his friend James Kennedy; soon after Byron's death they were reunited with their surviving family. In 1995, Christina Hardyment of The Daily Telegraph discovered a hitherto unknown connection to Byron through the poet Michael C. Burgess. Hardyment interviewed Burgess and his father, Geoffrey, after reading Byron and his children by Susan Normington. The book linked Hannah Burgess, Geoffrey's great-great grandmother, to Byron through her father William Marshall. Normington's research says Byron had "fathered at least four bastards" and that Marshall is one of Byron's alleged children. Scotland Although neglected by traditional historiography, Byron held deep ties to Scotland. His maternal family originated in Aberdeenshire and Byron studied at the Aberdeen Grammar School from 1794 to 1798. In terms of his national identity, he once described himself in a tongue-in-cheek manner as "half a Scot by birth, and bred/A whole one" and reportedly spoke with a faint Scottish accent throughout his life. Byron was described as a Scotsman by several of his contemporaries, including Lamb and Gordon, the latter of whom referred to him as a "Highlander". The historian Murray Pittock argues 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 connections, particularly with regard to north-eastern Scotland, which through his Gordon links remained central to the Byronic network throughout his life". Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which he denounced the Scottish literary establishment, and the Curse of Minerva have both been interpreted as "savagely repudiating all his claims of connection to Scotland". In the Curse of Minerva, Byron wrote: Daughter of Jove! in Britain’s injured name, A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim. Frown not on England; England owns him not: Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot. Ask’st thou the difference? From fair Phyle’s towers. Survey Bœotia; – Caledonia’s ours. And well I know within that bastard land, Hath Wisdom’s goddess never held command; A barren soil, where Nature’s germs, confined; To stern sterility, can stint the mind; Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth; Emblem of all to whom the Land gives birth. 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. 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. 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, despite the risk of becoming bitten and infected. 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. In a letter sent to Thomas Moore, Byron described following 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. During his lifetime, in addition to numerous cats, dogs, and horses, Byron kept a fox, monkeys, an eagle, a crow, a falcon, peacocks, guinea hens, an Egyptian crane, a badger, geese, a heron, and a goat. Except for the horses, they all resided indoors at his homes in England, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece. Vaccine scepticism Byron included an endorsement of vaccine hesitancy in his 1809 poem English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, he writes: Byron refers to 'cow-pox', a reference to Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine. He compares these vaccines with tractors (a fraudulent medical device), and galvanism, which was understood at the time to reference the reanimation of deceased convicts using electricity. "Gas" was likely a reference to nitrous oxide, a substance recently discovered by Humphry Davy to treat respiratory ailments. The deliberate choice to frame vaccines as similar to well-known controversial medical treatments shows Byron's tendency toward vaccine hesitancy in his writings. However, it appears he held different views in private, as he had his protege Robert Rushton inoculated for smallpox. ==Health and appearance==

Character and psyche 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. Deformed foot From birth, Byron had a deformity of his right foot. Although it has generally been referred to as a "club foot", some modern medical authors 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 affected by 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 self-conscious about this from a young age, nicknaming himself '''', 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, Physical appearance Byron's adult height was , his weight fluctuating between and . He was renowned for his personal beauty, which he enhanced by wearing curl-papers in his hair at night. 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 many 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 suggests that the pain in his deformed foot made physical activity difficult and that his weight problem was the result. 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". ==Political career==

Byron first took his seat in the House of Lords on 13 March 1809 but left London on 11 June 1809 for the Continent. Byron's association with the Holland House Whigs provided him with a discourse of liberty rooted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. 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, on 27 February 1812, 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, and concluded the proposed law was only missing two things to be effective: "Twelve Butchers for a Jury and a Jeffries for a Judge!". Byron's speech was officially recorded and printed in Hansard. 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 Byron had previously written out, was presented in manuscript form to Dallas, who quotes it in his work. Two months later, in conjunction with the other Whigs, Byron made another impassioned speech before the House of Lords in support of Catholic emancipation. Byron 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 Cut-Throats (1819) and The Intellectual Eunuch Castlereagh (1818). ==Poetic works==

Byron wrote prolifically. In 1832 his regular publisher, John Murray, released the complete works in 14 duodecimo volumes, including a life 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 self-published the beginning cantos, they were well received in some quarters. The poem was then released volume by volume through his regular publishing house. In letters to Francis Hodgson, Byron referred to Wordsworth as "Turdsworth". Irish Avatar Byron wrote the satirical pamphlet Irish Avatar after the royal visit by King George IV to Ireland. Byron criticised the attitudes displayed by the Irish people towards the Crown, an institution he perceived as oppressing them, and was dismayed by the positive reception George IV received during his visit. In the pamphlet, Byron lambasted Irish unionists and voiced muted support towards nationalistic sentiments in Ireland. ==Parthenon marbles==

Byron was a bitter opponent of Lord Elgin's removal of the Parthenon marbles from Athens and "reacted with fury" when Elgin's agent gave him a tour of the Parthenon, during which he saw the spaces left by the missing part of the frieze and metopes. He denounced Elgin's actions in his poem The Curse of Minerva and in Canto II (stanzas XI–XV) of ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.'' ==Legacy and influence==

featuring Charles Dickens, Archibald Lampman, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Moore Byron's image fascinated the public, and his wife Annabella coined the term "Byromania" to refer to the commotion surrounding him. 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 influenced 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. Franz Liszt was also deeply influenced by Byron, drawing inspiration from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage for his Années de pèlerinage and describing his own artistic persona as imbued with “mon byronisme”, embracing the Byronic hero ideal. In the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg set Byron's "Ode to Napoleon" to music. In April 2020 Byron was featured in a series of British postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail to commemorate the Romantic poets on the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Wordsworth. Ten 1st class stamps were issued of all the major British romantic poets, and each stamp included an extract from one of their most popular and enduring works, with Byron's "She Walks in Beauty" selected for the poet. Byronic hero The literary heroic figure of the "Byronic hero" has come to epitomize many of Byron's characteristics, and indeed this type of character pervades his own work. The use of a Byronic hero by many authors and artists of the Romantic movement shows Byron's influence during the 19th century and beyond, including the Brontë sisters. His philosophy was more durably influential in continental Europe than in England; Friedrich Nietzsche admired him, and the Byronic hero was echoed in Nietzsche's Übermensch, or superman. 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. These types of characters have since become ubiquitous in literature and politics. In popular culture ==Works==

depicting Byron's work • Index of Titles • Index of First Lines Major works • Hours of Idleness (1807) • Lachin y Gair (1807) • English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) • The Curse of Minerva (1812) • ''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) 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==