(Hours of Idleness was the first volume of poetry publishe...)
Hours of Idleness was the first volume of poetry published by Lord Byron, in 1807, when he was 19 years old. It is a collection of mostly short poems, many in imitation of classic Roman poets.
(Child Harold's Pilgrimage describes the travels and refle...)
Child Harold's Pilgrimage describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands; in a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.
("Giaour" is an offensive Turkish word for infidel or non-...)
"Giaour" is an offensive Turkish word for infidel or non-believer, and is similar to the Arabic word "kafir". The story is subtitled "A Fragment of a Turkish Tale", and is Byron's only fragmentary narrative poem. Lord Byron designed the story with three narrators giving their individual point of view about the series of events.
(The Bride of Abydos is a poem written by Lord Byron in 18...)
The Bride of Abydos is a poem written by Lord Byron in 1813. One of his earlier works, The Bride of Abydos is considered to be one of his "Heroic Poems", along with The Giaour, Lara, The Siege of Corinth, The Corsair and Parisina.
(The Corsair is a tale in verse by Lord Byron published in...)
The Corsair is a tale in verse by Lord Byron published in 1814 by John Murray in London, which was extremely popular and influential in its day, selling ten thousand copies on its first day of sale. The work was dedicated to Thomas Moore.
(The Prisoner of Chillon is a 392-line narrative poem by L...)
The Prisoner of Chillon is a 392-line narrative poem by Lord Byron. Written in 1816, it chronicles the imprisonment of a Genevois monk, François Bonivard, from 1532 to 1536.
(The Siege of Corinth is a rhymed, tragic narrative poem b...)
The Siege of Corinth is a rhymed, tragic narrative poem by Lord Byron. Published in 1816, it was inspired by the Ottoman massacre of the Venetian garrison holding the Acrocorinth - an incident in the Ottoman conquest of Morea during the Ottoman-Venetian Wars.
(Manfred contains supernatural elements, in keeping with t...)
Manfred contains supernatural elements, in keeping with the popularity of the ghost story in England at the time. It is a typical example of a Romantic closet drama.
(Written entirely in ottava rima stanza form, Byron's Don ...)
Written entirely in ottava rima stanza form, Byron's Don Juan blends high drama with earthy humour, outrageous satire of his contemporaries (in particular Wordsworth and Southey) and sharp mockery of Western societies, with England coming under particular attack.
(The volume conveys how his writing, veering from racy vul...)
The volume conveys how his writing, veering from racy vulgarity to polished eloquence, vividly evokes the worlds in which he lived-London and Venetian high society, the Swiss and Italian countryside, and the Greek war tents at Missolonghi. It also includes Byron's journals reprinted in full.
(This first collected edition of all Byron's known letters...)
This first collected edition of all Byron's known letters supersedes Prothero's incomplete edition at the turn of the century. It includes a considerable number of hitherto unpublished letters and the complete text of many that were bowdlerized by former editors for a variety of reasons. Prothero's edition included 1,198 letters. This edition will have more than 3,000, over 80 percent of them transcribed entirely from the original manuscripts.
(This authoritative edition brings together the complete c...)
This authoritative edition brings together the complete collection of Byron's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by important letters, journals, and conversations - to give the essence of his work and thinking.
George Gordon Byron, commonly known as Lord Byron, was an English poet, and politician. He was one of the most important figures of the Romantic movement. Because of his impressive literary works, active and controversial personal life, and renowned physical beauty he came to be considered the personification of the Romantic poet hero.
Background
George Gordon Byron was born in Holles Street, London, England, United Kingdom on January 22, 1788. His Scottish mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight, was the second wife of Captain John ("Mad Jack") Byron, whose first wife, the Marchioness of Carmarthen, died after bearing him a daughter, Augusta. The captain had spent most of the Gordon inheritance before he died in 1791.
In 1798, on the death of his great-uncle William, the "Wicked" Lord Byron, the boy became Sixth Baron Byron. His mother took him to live at Newstead Abbey, the estate near Nottingham which had come into the family by gift from Henry VIII.
Education
Byron was tutored in Nottingham and later sent to a private school at Dulwich and then to Harrow (in 1801). He was at first an "untamed colt," but led by the "silken cord" of Dr. Drury, the headmaster, and softened by the adulation of younger boys, he came to have a sentimental attachment for Harrow.
In the autumn of 1805 Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge.
Byron’s first published volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness, appeared in 1807. A sarcastic critique of the book in The Edinburgh Review provoked his retaliation in 1809 with a couplet satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which he attacked the contemporary literary scene. This work gained him his first recognition.
On reaching his majority in 1809, Byron took his seat in the House of Lords, and then embarked with Hobhouse on a grand tour. They sailed to Lisbon, crossed Spain, and proceeded by Gibraltar and Malta to Greece, where they ventured inland to Ioánnina and to Tepelene in Albania. In Greece Byron began Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which he continued in Athens. In March 1810 he sailed with Hobhouse for Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), visited the site of Troy, and swam the Hellespont (present-day Dardanelles) in imitation of Leander. Byron’s sojourn in Greece made a lasting impression on him. The Greeks’ free and open frankness contrasted strongly with English reserve and hypocrisy and served to broaden his views of men and manners. He delighted in the sunshine and the moral tolerance of the people.
Byron arrived back in London in July 1811, and his mother died before he could reach her at Newstead. In February 1812 he made his first speech in the House of Lords, a humanitarian plea opposing harsh Tory measures against riotous Nottingham weavers. At the beginning of March, the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published by John Murray, and Byron "woke to find himself famous." The poem describes the travels and reflections of a young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. Besides furnishing a travelogue of Byron’s own wanderings through the Mediterranean, the first two cantos express the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. In the poem Byron reflects upon the vanity of ambition, the transitory nature of pleasure, and the futility of the search for perfection in the course of a "pilgrimage" through Portugal, Spain, Albania, and Greece. In the wake of Childe Harold’s enormous popularity, Byron was lionized in Whig society.
Later, the agitations of two love affairs and the sense of mingled guilt and exultation they aroused in Byron are reflected in the series of gloomy and remorseful Oriental verse tales he wrote at this time: The Giaour (1813); The Bride of Abydos (1813); The Corsair (1814), which sold 10,000 copies on the day of publication; and Lara (1814).
After the separation with his wife, Byron went abroad in April 1816, never to return to England. Byron sailed up the Rhine River into Switzerland and settled at Geneva, near Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), who had eloped and were living with Claire Clairmont, Godwin’s half sister. In Geneva he wrote the third canto of Childe Harold (1816), which follows Harold from Belgium up the Rhine River to Switzerland. It memorably evokes the historical associations of each place Harold visits, giving pictures of the Battle of Waterloo (whose site Byron visited), of Napoleon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and of the Swiss mountains and lakes, in verse that expresses both the most aspiring and most melancholy moods.
A visit to the Bernese Oberland provided the scenery for the Faustian poetic drama Manfred (1817), whose protagonist reflects Byron’s own brooding sense of guilt and the wider frustrations of the Romantic spirit doomed by the reflection that man is "half dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar."
In October 1817 Byron and Hobhouse departed for Italy. They stopped in Venice, where Byron enjoyed the relaxed customs and morals of the Italians. In May he joined Hobhouse in Rome, gathering impressions that he recorded in a fourth canto of Childe Harold (1818). He also wrote Beppo, a poem in ottava rima that satirically contrasts Italian with English manners in the story of a Venetian menage-à-trois. The sale of Newstead Abbey in the autumn of 1818 for £94,500 cleared Byron of his debts, which had risen to £34,000, and left him with a generous income.
In the light, mock-heroic style of Beppo Byron found the form in which he would write his greatest poem, Don Juan, a satire in the form of a picaresque verse tale. The first two cantos of Don Juan were begun in 1818 and published in July 1819. Byron transformed the legendary libertine Don Juan into an unsophisticated, innocent young man who, though he delightedly succumbs to the beautiful women who pursue him, remains a rational norm against which to view the absurdities and irrationalities of the world. Upon being sent abroad by his mother from his native Sevilla (Seville), Juan survives a shipwreck en route and is cast up on a Greek island, whence he is sold into slavery in Constantinople. He escapes to the Russian army, participates gallantly in the Russians’ siege of Ismail, and is sent to St. Petersburg, where he wins the favour of the empress Catherine the Great and is sent by her on a diplomatic mission to England. The poem’s story, however, remains merely a peg on which Byron could hang a witty and satirical social commentary. His most consistent targets are, first, the hypocrisy and cant underlying various social and sexual conventions, and, second, the vain ambitions and pretenses of poets, lovers, generals, rulers, and humanity in general. Don Juan remains unfinished; Byron completed 16 cantos and had begun the 17th before his own illness and death. In Don Juan he was able to free himself from the excessive melancholy of Childe Harold and reveal other sides of his character and personality - his satiric wit and his unique view of the comic rather than the tragic discrepancy between reality and appearance.
After the chance meeting with Countess Teresa Gamba Guiccioli, Byron followed her to Ravenna, and she later accompanied him back to Venice. Byron returned to Ravenna in January 1820 as her cavalier servente (gentleman-in-waiting) and won the friendship of her father and brother, Counts Ruggero and Pietro Gamba, who initiated him into the secret society of the Carbonari and its revolutionary aims to free Italy from Austrian rule. In Ravenna Byron wrote The Prophecy of Dante; cantos III, IV, and V of Don Juan; the poetic dramas Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari, and Cain (all published in 1821); and a satire on the poet Robert Southey, The Vision of Judgment, which contains a devastating parody of that poet laureate’s fulsome eulogy of King George III.
Byron arrived in Pisa in November 1821, having followed Teresa and the Counts Gamba there, after the latter had been expelled from Ravenna for taking part in an abortive uprising. In Pisa Byron again became associated with Shelley, and in early summer of 1822 Byron went to Leghorn (Livorno), where he rented a villa not far from the sea. There in July the poet and essayist Leigh Hunt arrived from England to help Shelley and Byron edit a radical journal, The Liberal. Byron returned to Pisa and housed Hunt and his family in his villa. Despite the drowning of Shelley on July 8, the periodical went forward, and its first number contained The Vision of Judgment. At the end of September Byron moved to Genoa, where Teresa’s family had found asylum.
Byron’s interest in the periodical gradually waned, but he continued to support Hunt and to give manuscripts to The Liberal. After a quarrel with his publisher, John Murray, Byron gave all his later work, including cantos VI to XVI of Don Juan (1823 - 24), to Leigh Hunt’s brother John, publisher of The Liberal.
By this time Byron was in search of a new adventure. In April 1823 he agreed to act as agent of the London Committee, which had been formed to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence from Turkish rule. In July 1823 Byron left Genoa for Cephalonia. He sent £4,000 of his own money to prepare the Greek fleet for sea service and then sailed for Missolonghi on December 29 to join Prince Aléxandros Mavrokordátos, leader of the forces in western Greece.
Byron made efforts to unite the various Greek factions and took personal command of a brigade of Souliot soldiers, reputedly the bravest of the Greeks. But a serious illness in February 1824 weakened him, and in April he contracted the fever from which he died at Missolonghi on April 19.
Lord Byron was a highly prolific writer, well-known generally for his satiric realism of Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He is considered to be the first modern-style celebrity, a leading figure in the Romantic movement. He also may be credited with the birth of Armenology and its propagation, besides, he participated in the compilation of the English Armenian dictionary. Byron participated in the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero.
Byron rejected and repudiated both Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly religious." To his Scottish upbringing he owed his love of mountains, his love and knowledge of the Bible, and too much Calvinism for faith or unfaith in Christianity.
Politics
Byron took his seat at the House of Lords in 1809 and made his first speech there on February 27, 1812. A strong advocate of social reform, Byron 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. Byron was also a defender of Roman Catholics. He supported Catholic emancipation and expressed opposition to the established religion because it was unfair to people of other faiths. He was inspired to write political poems such as "Song for the Luddites" and "The Landlords' Interest", displaying Byron's libertarian politics before there were libertarians.
Views
Lord Byron was a leading figure of the Romantic Movement. His ideas about life and nature benefitted the world of literature. The recurring themes in most of his pieces are nature, the folly of love, realism in literature, liberty and the power of art. Lord Byron also uses the theme of life and death frequently in many of his poems to show the importance of these themes in the Romantic Era. The meaning of life in Byron's work is based on how he views his own life, and depicts it as light. Opposite to the theme of life, is the theme of death, which was also important to the people of this time. Lord Byron's poetry often reflected the theme of death, as in his time many of his lovers passed before he believed they were supposed to. The themes of life and death are very significant in Byron's poetry as it was mainly influenced by his life growing up in the era and his hardships during his time. Byron’s unique ideas brought new perspectives for English literature. His narrative and lyrical works are regarded as masterpieces and had had significant impacts on generations. Even today, writers try to imitate his unique style, considering him a beacon for writing plays and poetry.
Quotations:
"I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me."
"And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on."
"Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine."
"The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain."
"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."
"If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad."
"Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep."
"Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life."
"There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything."
"You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?"
"I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned."
"Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey."
"Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray."
"I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure."
"I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone."
"Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company."
"What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?"
"Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?"
"If I could always read I should never feel the want of company."
"Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after."
Membership
Byron was a member of the committee of management of Drury Lane theatre and devoted much of his time to his professional duties.
Personality
Lord Byron was renowned for his personal beauty, which he enhanced by wearing curl-papers in his hair at night. Byron was courageous, kind, and loved truth rather than lies. Lord Byron had a particularly magnetic personality. He acquired a reputation as being unconventional, eccentric, flamboyant and controversial. He was given to extremes of temper, which have often been taken as evidence of bipolar disorder, commonly known as manic depression. Byron had a great fondness for animals.
Physical Characteristics:
Byron's height was 5 feet 8.5 inches (1.74 m), his weight was about 200 lb (89 kg). He was athletic, being a competent boxer and horse-rider and an excellent swimmer. For most of his life, he was a vegetarian and often lived for days on dry biscuits and white wine. From birth, Byron suffered from a deformity of his right foot.
Quotes from others about the person
Jane Welsh Carlyle: "If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: 'Byron is dead!'."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Lord Byron is great only as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "It still saddens me that Lord Byron, who showed such impatience with the fickle public, wasn't aware of how well the Germans can understand him and how highly they esteem him. With us the moral and political tittle-tattle of the day falls away, leaving the man and the talent standing alone in all their brilliance."
William Hazlitt: "Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave."
Leigh Hunt: "In a room at the end of the garden to this house was a magnificent rocking-horse, which a friend had given my little boy; and Lord Byron, with a childish glee becoming a poet, would ride upon it. Ah! why did he ever ride his Pegasus to less advantage?"
John Keats: "You speak of Lord Byron and me - there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees - I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task."
Rowland Prothero: "Had Byron never written a line of poetry, his letters would give him a place in literature."
Interests
swimming, horseback riding and card game
Connections
The first romantic interest of the poet was his half-sister Augusta. In 1814, Byron proposed to his new lover, Anne Isabella Milbanke. The girl did not agree to marry the poet, but with pleasure continued to communicate with George in letters. After a year, Byron decided to ask again for her hand in marriage. This time, the girl accepted this offer, becoming the first wife of the poet. After some time, the wife gave birth to the firstborn - the daughter Ada. And a few months later, Anne Milbanke took the child and returned to her parents' house. The woman explained her decision by her husband’s infidelity and his strange habits, as well as Byron’s constant poverty and drunkenness.
In 1817, Byron had a short affair with a girl named Claire Clairmont, half-sister of writer Mary Shelley. Claire gave the poet a second daughter. The girl named Allegra died at the age of five.
In 1819 Byron began a new relationship with Tereza Gvichioli. At the time of acquaintance with Byron, the woman was married, but soon divorced her husband and began to openly live with the poet, not being afraid of public opinion. The time spent with Theresa was fruitful for Byron in terms of creativity. Until his departure to Greece, the poet lived with his beloved.
Father:
John Byron
(1757 - 2 August 1791)
John Byron was a British Army officer and letter writer.
Mother:
Catherine Gordon
(1770 - 1811)
Spouse:
Anne Isabella Milbanke
(17 May 1792 - 16 May 1860)
Anne Isabella Noel Byron was an English mathematician.
Daughter:
Ada Lovelace
(10 December 1815 - 27 November 1852)
Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.
Daughter:
Allegra Byron
(12 January 1817 - 20 April 1822)
Allegra Byron was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont.
Grandfather:
Hon. John Byron
(8 November 1723 - 10 April 1786)
Vice-Admiral John Byron was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer.
Friend:
John Cam Hobhouse
(27 June 1786 - 3 June 1869)
John Cam Hobhouse was an English politician and diarist.
Friend:
John Edleston
Partner:
Tereza Gvichioli
Tereza Gvichioli was the last love of the poet.
Partner:
Claire Clairmont
(27 April 1798 - 19 March 1879)
Claire Clairmont was the stepsister of writer Mary Shelley and the mother of Lord Byron's daughter Allegra.
References
Byron: Life and Legend
Byron: Life and Legend explores heretofore unrevealed aspects of Byron's complex creative existence, reassessing his poetry, reinterpreting his incomparable letters, and reconsidering the voluminous record left by the poet's contemporaries: his friends and family, his critics and supporters.
2002
The Cambridge Companion to Byron
In three sections devoted to the historical, textual and literary contexts of Byron's life and times, these specially commissioned essays by a range of eminent Byron scholars provide a compelling picture of the diversity of Byron's writings. The essays cover topics such as Byron's interest in the East, his relationship to the publishing world, his attitudes to gender, his use of Shakespeare and eighteenth-century literature, and his acute fit in a post-modernist world.
2004
Lord Byron's Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society
Lord Byron's Strength draws on contemporary literary, political, and social theory not only to revise our understanding of Byron but also to reexamine the romanticism of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, Hazlitt, and Shelley.
Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th Century England
Addresses the role and significance of homosexuality in Byron's life and work and examines the prevalent anti-homosexualism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England as revealed in period sources.
Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame
In this masterful portrait of the poet who dazzled an era and prefigured the modern age of celebrity, noted biographer Benita Eisler offers a fuller and more complex vision than we have yet been afforded of George Gordon, Lord Byron.
Byron's Women
Nine women; one poet named George Gordon, Lord Byron—the most flamboyant of the Romantics, he wrote literary bestsellers, he embodied the Romantic love of liberty, he was the prototype of the modern celebrity—and he treated women abominably.
