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Lord Byron

For other holders of the title, see Baron Byron . For other uses, see Byron (disambiguation) and George Byron (disambiguation) .

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron , later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron , FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron , was an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism . Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty , When We Two Parted , and So, we'll go no more a roving , in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan . He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.

Byron's notability rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured aristocratic excesses, huge debts, numerous love affairs, and self-imposed exile. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence , for whichGreeks revere him as a national hero . He died from a fever contracted while in Messolonghi in Greece.

Early life

Byron was the son of Captain John 'Mad Jack' Byron and his third wife, the former Catherine Gordon (d. 1811), heiress of Gight inAberdeenshire , Scotland. Byron's paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral The Hon., John 'Foulweather Jack' Byron and Sophia Trevanion. Vice Admiral John Byron had circumnavigated the globe, and was the younger brother of the 5th Baron Byron , known as "the Wicked Lord".

He was christened George Gordon Byron at St Marylebone Parish Church after his maternal grandfather, George Gordon of Gight , a descendant of King James I . This grandfather committed suicide in 1779. Byron's mother Catherine had to sell her land and title to pay her husband's debts. John Byron may have married Catherine for her money and, after squandering her fortune and selling her estate, having spent very little time with his wife and child in order to avoid creditors, he deserted them both and died a year later. Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy.

Catherine Gordon, Byron's mother

Catherine moved back to Scotland shortly afterwards, where she raised her son in Aberdeen .On 21 May 1798, the death of Byron's great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron, made the 10-year-old the 6th Baron Byron, and the young man then inherited both title and estate, Newstead Abbey , in Nottinghamshire, England. His mother proudly took him to England. Byron lived at his estate infrequently, as the Abbey was rented to Lord Grey de Ruthyn , among others, during Byron's adolescence.

In August 1799, Byron entered the school of William Glennie , an Aberdonian in Dulwich .Byron would later say that around this time and beginning when he still lived in Scotland, his governess, May Gray, would come to bed with him at night and "play tricks with his person". According to Byron, this "caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts—having anticipated life". Gray was dismissed for allegedly beating Byron when he was 11.

Byron received his early formal education at Aberdeen Grammar School . In 1801 he was sent to Harrow , where he remained until July 1805. He represented Harrow during the very first Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lord's in 1805^] After school he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge

Name

The mountain Lochnagar is the subject of one of Byron's poems, in which he reminisces about his childhood

Byron's names changed throughout his life. He was christened "George Gordon Byron" in London. "Gordon" was a baptismal name, not a surname, after his m