George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

:For a list of others who have held the title Lord Byron see Baron Byron

Life

Byron was born in London, the son of Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and of John's second wife Lady Catherine Gordon, heiress of Gight, Aberdeenshire. His paternal grandfather was Vice-Admiral John "Foulweather Jack" Byron, who had circumnavigated the globe. He was also the grand-nephew of William Byron, 5th Baron Byron, known as "the Wicked Lord". From his birth he suffered from a malformation of the feet, causing a slight lameness, which was a cause of lifelong misery to him, aggravated by the knowledge that with proper care it might have been cured.

Related Topics:
Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron - Aberdeenshire - Vice-Admiral - William Byron, 5th Baron Byron

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He was christened George Gordon after his maternal grandfather, George Gordon, 12th Laird of Gight, a descendant of James I. This grandfather committed suicide in 1779. Byron's mother Catherine had to sell her land and title to pay her father's debts. John Byron had married Catherine for her money and, after squandering it, deserted her. She was a capricious woman of violent temper, with no fitness for guiding her volcanic son, and biographers think her father's suicide, and the forced sale of her legacy and the loss of her fortune (thanks to Byron's father) may altogether explain, if they do not excuse, the spirit of revolt which was his lifelong characteristic.

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Byron's parents had separated before his birth. Lady Catherine moved back to Scotland shortly afterwards, where she lived on a small salvage from her fortune, and raised her son in Aberdeen in strained circumstances until May 21, 1798, when he had reached the age of ten and the death of his great-uncle made him the sixth Baron Byron. He received his formal education at the Grammar School in Aberdeen. In 1801 he was sent to Harrow, where he remained until 1805, when he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read much history and fiction, lived extravagantly, and got into debt.

Related Topics:
Scotland - May 21 - 1798 - 1801 - Harrow - Trinity College - Cambridge

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Some early verses which he had published in 1806 were suppressed. They were followed in 1807 by Hours of Idleness, which was savagely attacked in the Edinburgh Review. In reply he sent forth English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), which created considerable stir and shortly went through 5 editions. Meanwhile, he had settled at Newstead Abbey, the family seat, where with some of his cronies he was believed to have indulged in wild and extravagant orgies, the accounts of which, however, were probably greatly exaggerated. In 1809 he left England, and passing through Spain, went to Greece. During his absence, which extended over two years, he wrote the first two cantos of Childe Harold, which were published after his return in 1812, and were received with acclamation. In his own words, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." He followed up his success with some short poems, The Corsair, Lara, etc. About the same time began his intimacy with his future biographer, Thomas Moore.

Related Topics:
1806 - 1807 - 1809 - Newstead Abbey - 1812 - Thomas Moore

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He eventually took his seat at the House of Lords, and made his first speech there on February 27, 1812.

Related Topics:
House of Lords - February 27 - 1812

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

Related Topics:
Regency London - Lady Caroline Lamb - William Lamb - Epigram - Augusta Leigh - April 15 - 1814 - Incest

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Augusta herself encouraged Byron to marry to avoid scandal. He reluctantly chose Anne Isabella Milbanke ("Annabella"), a cousin of the Lady Caroline, who had refused him in the previous year. They married at Seaham Hall, County Durham on January 2, 1815. (Later, when Annabella's mother died, her will stipulated that her beneficiaries must take her family name in order to inherit. Lord Byron added it and became George Gordon Noel Byron in 1822.)

Related Topics:
Anne Isabella Milbanke - Seaham - County Durham - January 2 - 1815

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The marriage proved unhappy, owing to the total incompatibility of the parties, and serious provocations on the part of Byron: he treated her terribly and showed great disappointment at the birth of a daughter (Augusta Ada) rather than a son. On January 16, 1816, Lady Byron left George, taking Ada with her. On April 21, Byron signed the Deed of Separation. After this break-up of his domestic life, followed as it was by the severe censure of society, and by pressure on the part of his creditors, which led to the sale of his library, Byron again left England, as it turned out, for ever.

Related Topics:
Augusta Ada - January 16 - 1816 - April 21

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(Ada later on worked with Charles Babbage on a memoir on the Analytical Engine and became known as the writer of the world's first computer program.)

Related Topics:
Charles Babbage - Analytical Engine

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Byron passed through Belgium and up the Rhine; in the summer of 1816 Lord Byron and his personal physician, John William Polidori settled in Switzerland, at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva. There he became friends with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's wife-to-be Mary Godwin. He was also joined by Mary's step-sister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in London. Byron initially refused to have anything to do with Claire, and would only agree to remain in her presence with the Shelleys, who eventually persuaded Byron to accept and provide for Allegra, the child she bore him in January 1817.

Related Topics:
John William Polidori - Switzerland - Lake Geneva - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Mary Godwin - Claire Clairmont - 1817

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At the Villa Diodati, kept indoors by the "incessant rain" of that "wet, ungenial summer", over three days in June the five turned to reading fantastical stories, including "Fantasmagoriana" (in the French edition), 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 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.

Related Topics:
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus - The Vampyre - Romantic - Vampire - Genre

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Byron wintered in Venice, where he formed a connection with Jane Clairmont, the daughter of William Godwin's second wife. In 1817 he was in Rome, whence 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 Countess Guiccioli, whom he persuaded to leave her husband. It was about this time that he received a visit from Moore, to whom he confided his MS. autobiography, which Moore, in the exercise of the discretion left to him, burned in 1824.

Related Topics:
William Godwin - 1817 - 1818 - 1820 - Countess Guiccioli - 1824

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While living in Venice, Byron would row in his gondola daily to the Armenian monastery of St. Lazarus spending hours poring over rare books in the library which impressed him so much that he learned the difficult Armenian language, helped to compile an Armenian grammar textbook and translated two of St. Paul's epistles into English.

Related Topics:
Armenian - St. Lazarus

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His next move was to Ravenna, where he wrote much, chiefly dramas, including Marino Faliero. In 1821-22 he finished cantos 6-12 of Don Juan at Pisa, and in the same year he joined with Leigh Hunt in starting a short-lived newspaper, The Liberal, in the first number of which appeared The Vision of Judgment. His last Italian home was Genoa, where he was still accompanied by the Countess, and where he lived until 1823, when he offered himself as an ally to the Greek insurgents.

Related Topics:
1821 - 22 - 1823

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