Byron, George G.

Born: 1788-01-22 London, United Kingdom

Died: 1824-04-19 Greece

Lord George G. Byron was an English Romantic poet and satirist. Born to Catherine Gordon, heiress of the Gight estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and Captain John Byron, he was christened "George Gordon Byron," receiving his mother's surname due to naming requirements imposed upon the husband of the heiress of Gight. Byron studied at Harrow School in London from 1801-1805, then entered Trinity College in Cambridge. From the time he was a child Byron was known to have a volatile temper and boisterous disposition, and during his school years he developed a reputation for indulging in wild and extravagant parties. He published some of his first poetry while studying at Trinity, including Hours of Idleness, which was not well-received at the time. He graduated from Trinity College in 1808, and, in 1809, left England to travel through Spain and Greece. It was during this period that he wrote the first two cantos of one of his best-known works: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a successful work that brought him fame by the time he returned to England in 1812. In 1815, he married Anne Isabella Milbanke and in 1815, had one daughter with her (Augusta "Ada"), but legally separated from her in 1816. In the remaining eight years of his life, Byron vacillated between professional success and personal debt and social censure. Travelling through Belgium and Switzerland, then on to Italy, he wrote the final two cantos of Childe Harold as well as other poems and dramatic works, including his acclaimed poem Don Juan. Byron settled in Genoa, Italy in 1822, but left in 1823 to aid Greek insurgents in their battle against Turkish rule. He arrived in Missolonghi, Greece in January 1824, but died of malarial fever several months later.

John W. Cousin, "Byron, George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1910), 66-68; Thomas Moore, The Life of Lord Byron (London: John Murray, 1844), 3-4, 34, 586-87.