English 101: English Literature

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Lord Byron was once called 'mad, bad and dangerous to know.' In this lesson, you'll learn about this poet who is one of English Romanticism's most celebrated and prolific figures.

Introduction to Lord Byron

Lord Byron - he is no ordinary poet. A refrain that I talk about a lot when I talk about poets and authors is that they were unappreciated in their lifetime, and nobody liked them and they struggled for acceptance. Lord Byron did not have that problem. His poertry was popular. He was popular. He had a real way with the ladies and some dudes, actually, too. He was a tabloid celebrity of his day. If there was a People magazine back then, he would have been all over it. They'd be like, 'who's he with now?' And there'd be a list of all these women and 'scandal' in big red letters across his head. He left a trail of heartache that inspired Fatal Attraction- type responses. It was nuts.

We're going to look at his early years, including the story of his name, which is interesting as well. We'll talk about how he got exiled from England. Oh, yeah. He wrote poetry, too. He didn't just go around womanizing - he wrote some stuff. So, we're going to talk about all that.

About That Name

First off - the name, Lord Byron - he sounds like an important guy. He wasn't born an important guy. He was born George Noel Gordon in London in 1788. His father was Captain John 'Mad Jack' Byron, which is kind of an awesome name on its own. So, George should've been Byron. That would make sense. Why was he born Gordon? Who's Gordon?

His mother was an heiress. Her name was Catherine Gordon. His dad, Captain Byron - Captain Mad Jack, had squandered his first wife's fortune and she died, and then he married Catherine. In order to claim her estate, so he could also squander her fortune, he took Gordon as his surname, so that's why Little Byron has Gordon as his surname. So, basically, it's kind of progressive - the man took the wife's name - if it weren't motivated out of greed. But that's how he got to be Gordon. But then he was christened George Gordon Byron; at school he was registered as George Byron Gordon. It's all very confusing.

Then, when he was ten, his great uncle died, who was William Byron, the 5th Baron Byron, which is hard to say. He wasn't such a great guy. He was known as the 'Wicked Lord' and 'Devil Byron.' He's not filling in good footsteps. When he died, George became the 6th Baron Byron, which is why he got to be a lord, so that's how he ended up Lord Byron.

Later in life, he'd add the 'Noel' back on in order to inherit an estate. People made fun of Prince for changing his name, but, I guess, Byron didn't ever change it into a symbol, so maybe that's why he's been left out of the mocking.

The Young Poet

He could have published poetry under ten different names if he wanted to. It might have helped him hone a persona because he was publishing poetry that didn't get very good reviews, but it was always kind of attached to his name, so that's not so great. He publishes this collection of poems called Hours of Idleness in 1807. It gets savaged in the Edinburgh Review. They hate it.

Two years later, 1809, Bryon gets his revenge by writing something called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which is like a satire. Some were so offended that they actually challenged Byron to a duel, which doesn't happen nearly enough these days with satire. The President doesn't call up SNL and demand a duel to get back at them for making fun of his ears or whatever. This is actually Byron's first in a long line of satirical works that target enemies or people who have made fun of him.

1809 - this is the same year again - he goes out on a tour. He goes to Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey. These travels inspired his first big, hit poem, which is Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Childe Harold is the hero of this. It's semi-autobiographical, and it's in two parts. These parts are called cantos. He'd add additional sections to it as the years went on. It was an opportunity for him to collect his emotions, beliefs and share his adventures.

It follows a hero who, like Byron, travelled around to foreign lands and also characterizes the melancholy and disillusionment felt by Byron and lots of other people like Byron after the French Revolution and after the Napoleonic Wars - the sense that things were going to be great, but now maybe they're not that great.

The title character of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, who I said is Childe Harold, would come to be recognized as the first Byronic Hero, which is a major Romantic trope. The Byronic Hero, like the Romantics, has a complicated soul. He's an intellectual, but also sensitive and moody. He's a wanderer, which makes him isolated from society. He appears all over works of Byron because he invented the dude. He's like Don Draper, like on Mad Men - this mysterious, compelling, attractive dude with a dark past. That's the Byronic Hero - very compelling. He's the guy that you think you can chain down and train, and then he breaks your heart in the end. That's the Byronic Hero.

The Player

Byron publishes Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He's a star. People love it. It didn't hurt that he's good-looking, and he's renowned for that. He was born with a clubfoot, but I guess that didn't stop him. You don't see that until you're pretty well intimately acquainted with him.

He had the hot book in town, and he begins this affair with a woman named Lady Caroline Lamb. She's the one who called him 'mad, bad and dangerous to know,' which is such a wonderful description. They had a tumultuous relationship. She had a husband, which turned into a big scandal. Byron loved people with husbands. He did this a lot - loving and leaving them all over town.

He took up with a woman named Lady Oxford after Lady Caroline. Lady Caroline took to stalking him. She wouldn't eat anything, and she turned really skinny.

Then there was this other woman named Augusta Leigh, who was Byron's half-sister who he might have had an affair with, so there's an element of incest. It's kind of funny and gross. In 1814, she gives birth to a child. Byron goes to see the kid and makes special note that the child wasn't an ape, so he wasn't deformed, which was believed to be caused by incest. Why would he comment that it wasn't an ape if he didn't have a reason to believe it would be? That's sort of evidence for the incest theory. I don't look at babies and say, 'Whew! It's not an ape. Thank God!' So, take from that what you will.

It's fitting that during this period of romantic tumult and sleeping with his sister, Byron produced a work called She Walks in Beauty, which is a short poem about a beautiful woman. It starts out:

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies._

Byron would come full circle then. A woman who was Lady Caroline's cousin, Annabella - he actually marries her in 1815. What? Why? Why would you get married, Lord Byron? You know you can't be tied down to any one woman. Turns out he absolutely couldn't. They had a daughter, and then they separated due to tons of stuff - incest, infidelity, the whole bag - sodomy rumors. It was nuts. Annabella, his wife of a year, is significant for having coined the term 'Byronmania' to describe Bryon's celebrity. Sort of the predecessor to Beatlemania, or these days, Bieber fever, I suppose, would be the analog, although it doesn't seem right.

In 1816, he leaves England. His wife and daughter are gone and his reputation's in jeopardy.

The Traveling Poet

He wanders around in Europe, hangs out with Percy Shelley and his wife, Mary Shelley. While hanging out with Byron, she comes up with the idea for Frankenstein. Byron was having an affair with one of Mary Shelley's sisters, named Claire. So that was part of that entanglement.

It was a really productive period for both Byron and for Shelley. Byron completed the third Childe Harold canto in 1816 and does a bunch of other stuff. The Shelleys go back to England. Claire is carrying Lord Byron's child. Lord Byron decides to go off to Italy.

He has more affairs with married women in Venice. One of them let him move into her house and then got mad at him, and he had to go out and sleep in the gondola, which I guess is the Venetian equivalent of having to sleep on the couch. She threw herself into a canal over him. It was a mess.

He wrote a ton in Italy. He did the fourth Childe Harold canto. He did a supernatural poem called Manfred, a closet drama (which means a drama that isn't meant to be performed) called Cain - it's about Cain and Abel, and then he writes this poem called Beppo, which is awesome title; it's a satire. It's kind of the story of The Princess Bride. Buttercup loves Westley, and then he goes off and became a rich pirate, she marries Humperdinck, Westley comes back. Beppo is basically the same thing, if Buttercup had willingly taken Humperdinck as her lover and then gone back to Westley and everyone was fine at the end. Basically, the message of the poem is that adultery shouldn't be a big deal. It's probably understandable why Byron would write that.

After Beppo, he pretty much exclusively worked on what's widely regarded to be his masterpiece, Don Juan. It's an epic satire. We're going to explore that in a separate lesson. It was so long that it wasn't even done when he died.

The Revolutionary

Byron was a controversial figure because of all those affairs that he had. He was also active politically. He had a seat in the House of Lords because he was a lord (Byron). He only spoke in Parliament three times, but each time he did, he was being deliberately ornery. In 1811, he gets up, and he defends the Luddites, who are people who went around and smashed the machinery that put them out of work. It's like if encyclopedia publishers came in and smashed computers because you can access Wikipedia on them. That's what the Luddites were like. Byron was into that. He wrote poems about politics. He wrote one called Song for the Luddites. He was kind of active in stuff.

He used his power of satire to attack his perceived enemies. He had a target on Robert Southey, who he perceived as a lesser Romantic poet.

His politics eventually led him to Greece, where he was involved in the independence movement from the Ottoman Empire. He decided he was going to attack a Turkish fortress even though he did not know what he was doing. Luckily, before he could go to battle, he got really sick, and then he actually died because of bloodletting. He probably would have survived, but the doctors were like, 'We're going to let out blood to cure you,' and then that weakened him, and then he died. That's the end of Lord Byron in 1824.

Lesson Summary

So, that was a lot. Lord Byron - he of many names - he was a prolific Romantic poet. He wrote so much. He also seduced so many women, particularly married women in England and also some married women in Venice. He is notable for the trope of the Byronic Hero, which is that dark, brooding hero figure that is in his poems and lots of other people's poems. His major works were Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, She Walks in Beauty and Don Juan. We mentioned some others, but those are the real big ones. That's a little summary of Lord Byron's life.