Lord Byron born 22 January 1788 (d. 1824)George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, commonly known as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Among Lord Byron's best-known works are the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. The latter remained incomplete on his death. He was regarded as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read.
Lord Byron's fame rests not only on his prolific writings but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and allegations of incest and sodomy. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know'.
Ultimately he was to live abroad to escape the censure of British society, where men could be forgiven for sexual misbehaviour only up to a point, one which Byron far surpassed.Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organisation the Carbonari in its struggle against Austria, and later travelled to fight against the Turks in the Greek War of Independence, for which the Greeks consider him a national hero. He died in Messolonghi, having caught a violent cold which, aggravated by the bleeding insisted upon by his doctors, turned into a fever.
A complete picture of Byron's character has only been possible in recent years with the freeing up of the archive of Murray, Byron's original publishers, who had formerly withheld compromising letters and instructed at least one major biographer (Leslie A. Marchand) to censor details of his bisexuality.
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron at WikipediA, for a full account of his life and work.
Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824) at the GLBTQ Encyclopedia, for an account of Lord Byron's life focusing on his bisexuality.
