As the foremost of the group of English poets who would come to be known as the Romantics, George Gordon Byron, later Lord Byron, became a symbol for the poet whose life was as decadent and fantastic as his poetry.
George Gordon Byron was born in 1788 to Captain John Byron and Catherine Gordon (John’s second wife). George Gordon Byron was born with a club-foot which resulted in lameness. The young Byron endured painful and useless treatments for the club-foot before being fitted for a corrective boot.

Byron’s early childhood was spent in Aberdeen, Scotland, in genteel poverty marked by the death of his father in 1791. However, young Byron’s fortunes changed considerably in 1708 when he inherited his great-uncle’s title, thus becoming George Gordon, Lord Byron. Along with the baronetcy came the estates and privileges, and Catherine Gordon took her son to England to enjoy them.

Byron spent his adolescent years in Dulwich, Harrow, and Cambridge. It was in Newstead, in 1802, that he likely met his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Later, the two were suspected of incest.

In 1807, Byron’s first collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness, was published to bad reviews. The clever Byron responded with his next volume, English Bards And Scotch Reviewers in 1808. The next year would be an eventful one; now 21, Byron took his seat in the House of Lords and embarked upon a grand tour that took him to Spain, Albania, Greece, and Malta.

In 1812, Byron found his first success as a poet upon the release of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. After this, his writing became required reading in English society – The Corsair, released in 1814, sold 10,000 copies on the first day of its release. His success made him the toast of London – his outlandish behavior made him a scandal. His open affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb (who would bestow upon Byron the immortal sobriquet “mad, bad and dangerous to know”) shocked his peers.

Lady Caroline was not Byron’s only scandalous lover; it was in 1813 that Byron was supposed to have had an incestuous relationship with Augusta Leigh. During the summer of 1813 Byron apparently entered into a more than brotherly relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, who was a mother of three daughters. In 1814 Augusta gave birth to daughter Elizabeth Medora, and many assumed the child belong to Byron.

By 1816, Byron had been married – and divorced – and the father to a daughter, Ada. On the heels of his rumors swirling about his relationship with Augusta Leigh and his accumulation of gambling debts, Byron left Englad for Geneva, settling there with his mistress, Claire Clairmont and Percy Bysshe Shelley and wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

Byron traveled on to Italy, where he spent two years writing. One of the pieces he completed while in Rome was his masterpiece, Don Juan. However, During his years in Italy, Byron wrote Lament Of Tasso, inspired by his visit in Tasso’s cell in Rome, Mazeppa and started Don Juan, his satiric masterpiece. While in Ravenna and Pisa, Byron became deeply interested in drama, and wrote among others The Two Foscari, Sardanapalaus, Cain, and the unfinished Heaven And Earth.

In 1823, Byron decided to aid the Greek effort to overthrow the Ottomans. Byron never made it to the battlefield; he contracted a fever and died in Missolonghia in April 1824. Memorials for George Gordon, Lord Byron, were held on many different soils before his body returned to England, only to refused interment by both Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s. Byron was ultimately buried in the family vault in Nottinghamshire.

Poems by Lord Byron:

She Walks in Beauty

So We’ll Go No More A-Roving

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull