George
Gordon Byron
George Gordon Byron was born on January 22, 1788 in Aberdeen,
Scotland, and inherited his family's English title at the age of ten, becoming
Baron Byron of Rochdale. Abandoned by his father at an early age and resentful
of his mother, who he blamed for his being born with a deformed foot, Byron
isolated himself during his youth and was deeply unhappy. Though he was the
heir to an idyllic estate, the property was run down and his family had no
assets with which to care for it. As a teenager, Byron discovered that he was
attracted to men as well as women, which made him all the more remote and
secretive.
He studied at Aberdeen Grammar School and then Trinity College
in Cambridge. During this time Byron collected and published his first volumes
of poetry. The first, published anonymously and titled Fugitive Pieces,
was printed in 1806 and contained a miscellany of poems, some of which were
written when Byron was only fourteen. As a whole, the collection was considered
obscene, in part because it ridiculed specific teachers by name, and in part
because it contained frank, erotic verses. At the request of a friend, Byron recalled
and burned all but four copies of the book, then immediately began compiling a
revised version—though it was not published during his lifetime. The next year,
however, Byron published his second collection, Hours of Idleness, which
contained many of his early poems, as well as significant additions, including
poems addressed to John Edelston, a younger boy whom Byron had befriended and
deeply loved.
By Byron's twentieth birthday, he faced overwhelming debt.
Though his second collection received an initially favorable response, a
disturbingly negative review was printed in January of 1808, followed by even
more scathing criticism a few months later. His response was a satire, English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which received mixed attention. Publicly
humiliated and with nowhere else to turn, Byron set out on a tour of the
Mediterranean, traveling with a friend to Portugal, Spain, Albania, Turkey, and
finally Athens. Enjoying his new-found sexual freedom, Byron decided to stay in
Greece after his friend returned to England, studying the language and working
on a poem loosely based on his adventures. Inspired by the culture and climate
around him, he later wrote to his sister, "If I am a poet ... the air of
Greece has made me one."
Byron returned to England in the summer of 1811 having completed
the opening cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a poem which tells the
story of a world-weary young man looking for meaning in the world. When the
first two cantos were published in March of 1812, the expensive first printing
sold out in three days. Byron reportedly said, "I awoke one morning and
found myself famous."
His fame, however, was among the aristocratic intellectual
class, at a time when only cultivated people read and discussed literature. The
significant rise in a middle-class reading public, and with it the dominance of
the novel, was still a few years away. At 24, Byron was invited to the homes of
the most prestigious families and received hundreds of fan letters, many of
them asking for the remaining cantos of his great poem—which eventually
appeared in 1818.
An outspoken politician in the House of Lords, Byron used his
popularity for public good, speaking in favor of workers' rights and social
reform. He also continued to publish romantic tales in verse. His personal
life, however, remained rocky. He was married and divorced, his wife Anne
Isabella Milbanke having accused him of everything from incest to sodomy. A
number of love affairs also followed, including one with Claire Clairmont, the
poet Percy
Bysshe Shelley's sister in law. By 1816, Byron was afraid for his
life, warned that a crowd might lynch him if he were seen in public.
Forced to flee England, Byron settled in Italy and began writing
his masterpiece, Don Juan, an epic-satire novel-in-verse loosely based
on a legendary hero. He also spent much of his time engaged in the Greek fight
for independence and planned to join a battle against a Turkish-held fortress
when he fell ill, becoming increasingly sick with persistent colds and fevers.
When he died on April 19, 1824, at the age of 36, Don Juan
was yet to be finished, though 17 cantos had been written. A memoir, which also
hadn't been published, was burned by Byron's friends who were either afraid of
being implicated in scandal or protective of his reputation.
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