Lord Byron - Romantic and scandalous poet

Amongst some of Byron's best-regarded poems are She Walks in Beauty, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. His The Prisoner of Chillon is a 392-line narrative poem that chronicles the imprisonment of a monk in the iconic castle on Lake Geneva.

Born in 1788, George Gordon Byron grew up in Aberdeen, and was brought up by his mother Catherine, who experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy, setting a scene for his own erratic behaviour. Byron was born with a club foot, and his mother once referred to him as a 'lame brat'.

He inherited the title 'Baron Byron' from his great uncle when he was 10 years old, and was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. When he turned 21 he took up his seat in the House of Lords. Byron however left England the following year for a two-year European tour of the Mediterranean countries. Whilst away, he had begun work on the poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a partly autobiographical account of a young man’s travels abroad. The first part of the work was published to great acclaim, and Byron became famous overnight.

In 1812, Byron embarked on an affair with the passionate, eccentric – and married – Lady Caroline Lamb. The scandal shocked the British public. He also had affairs with Lady Oxford, Lady Frances Webster and, it is thought, with his married half-sister, Augusta Leigh. In 1813, perhaps in an attempt to recover his reputation, Byron married Annabelle Milbanke, with whom he had a daughter Augusta Ada. Known as Ada Lovelace, she became a pioneer of early machine programming (a separate Six Things entry). But due to Byron's many affairs, the couple separated shortly after Ada's birth.

The poet fled England in 1816, leaving many broken affairs and mounting debts behind. He spent the summer at Lake Geneva with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and, his wife Mary. It was here that the seminal gothic novel Frankenstein was conceived, as the fruits of a ghost story telling contest. Mary’s half sister Claire Clairmont, with whom Byron also had had an affair whilst in London, was present, and in 1817 she returned to London to give birth to a daughter, Allegra - although she died in childhood.

In 1818 the sale of the family home, Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire, cleared Byron’s debts and left him with a generous income. In 1819, he began an affair in Italy with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, who was just 19 years old. At this time, Byron wrote some of his most famous works, including the satiric Don Juan, retelling the story of the notorious womaniser, which he never finished.

Taking part in the Greek war for independence from the Turks in 1823, Byron spent £4000 refitting the Greek fleet, and took command of a unit of fighters. But his health began to deteriorate and in 1824, he fell ill and died from fever in Missolonghi, Greece, and his body was brought back to England. Plans for his burial in Westminster Abbey were refused on account of his “questionable morality”. Instead, he was buried at his ancestral home Newstead Abbey.

Further reading

• Lord Byron - British Library
• Lord Byron - Poetry Foundation
• Visit Newstead Abbey