Jackson Bibliography of Romantic Poetry

Byron, George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale (1788-1824: ODNB)

pseudonyms  Quevedo Redivivus; Horace Hornem, Esq.

Born at London to Captain John Byron and his second wife, Catherine (Gordon). Through his father he was connected to Lord Byron of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. His father was profligate and raced through the considerable funds Catherine had brought into the marriage; he died in 1791 after abandoning his wife and child who were living at Aberdeen. Left under the care of his strong-willed but capricious mother, Byron attended Aberdeen grammar school and developed a passion for the rugged and romantic Highland scenery. Despite a congenitally deformed right foot, he was active in sports and excelled at swimming. In 1798 he inherited the title Baron Byron and the dilapidated and debt-encumbered estate of Newstead. John Hanson, a London chancery solicitor, was appointed to act for Byron, and it was to him that Byron revealed the sexual abuse he had suffered from his nurse, May Gray. He entered Harrow School in 1801, and in 1804 began corresponding with his half-sister Augusta, establishing a relationship that was to be enduringly important in his life (and possibly had a sexual element). In 1805 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and there put together his first collection of poems, Fugitive Pieces, afterwards revised and privately issued as Poems on Various Occasions (1807). When Hours of Idleness, Byron’s first published volume, appeared in 1807, his growing interest in satire was fruitfully stoked by hostile reviews to produce his first major work, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)—a poem which, in broadly critiquing British culture, crafted his distinctive oppositional voice. Embarking on a lengthy tour of Iberia and the Levant, Byron composed the two first cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a poem extending his critique to Europe and sketching the characteristics of his “Byronic hero.” Published by John Murray in 1812, after Byron’s return to England and the death of his mother, it sold out in days and definitively established Byron’s fame. During the succeeding period when he had relationships with many women (including Lady Caroline Lamb who applied to him the phrase “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”), his celebrity steadily increased with his outpouring of poetry in various genres and, most notably, the series of verse romances based on his experiences in the Levant. However, his marriage in 1815 to Annabella Milbanke (mother of his daughter, Ada, born 1815) proved so disastrous that the resulting scandal sent him into permanent exile. In Europe, he befriended Mary and Percy Shelley (and had a brief relationship with Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, fathering her short-lived daughter, Allegra). He lived first in Switzerland and then in Italy where, in 1818, he began writing his satiric masterpiece, Don Juan. It, like Childe Harold, was written and published piecemeal, and its exceptionally complex textual history is due to publishing decisions made in fear of legal action. These decisions included issuing the various cantos with neither author’s nor publisher’s name and, therefore, with no copyright protection—a fact which immediately led to piracy on a massive scale. Murray’s caution eventually led him to break with Byron and John Hunt, brother of Leigh Hunt, took over as his publisher. During the time of writing Don Juan Byron began his final important romantic relationship with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, and he lived with her in Italy on and off until late 1823. When the London Greek Committee, acting on the suggestion of Byron’s friend, John Cam Hobhouse, approached him to support the Greek war of independence, Byron threw himself into the endeavour, establishing a fighting force and sailing first for Cephalonia and then Missolonghi. Landing there in January 1824, he was greeted enthusiastically as a saviour and hero. By April, however, Byron was dangerously ill with fever and he died on 19 April at Missolonghi. Against his wishes, his body was returned to England where burial in Westminster Abbey was refused; instead, on Augusta’s directions, his body was interred at Hucknall Torkard church near Newstead. (ODNB 27 May 2018; William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period [2004])

• Byron
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• Lord Byron
• the Right Honourable Lord Byron

Books written (457):