George Gordon Byron, Baron Byron collection

George Gordon Byron, Baron Byron (1788-1824), British poet who became one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement and gained fame as much for his scandal-ridden personal life as for his poetry. Educated at Harrow and Cambridge, Byron embarked on an extended Grand Tour in 1808, visiting both the western and eastern Mediterranean.

On his return to England in 1812, Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a narrative poem featuring the first appearance of the "Byronic hero." The poem was a sensation, and Byron "awoke one morning and found myself famous." The following four years saw a series of successful publications, including The Bride of Abydos (1813), Hebrew Melodies (1815), and The Prisoner of Chillon (1816), and a series of often scandalous love affairs, including relationships with Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Oxford.

Byron married the mathematically gifted heiress Anna Isabella Milbanke, Caroline Lamb's cousin, in 1814. The couple had one daughter, but the marriage soon broke down, and Byron was the subject of widespread rumors of adultery and an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. After signing a deed of separation in April, Byron left England and never returned. A summer spent at the Villa Diodati with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and her half-sister Claire Claremont resulted in the story fragment The Vampyre and the eventual birth of his illegitimate daughter by Claremont, Clara Allegra.

Byron spent the following years in Italy, settling primarily in Venice from 1816 through 1819, where he pursued a series of affairs with local women, documented in his correspondence and journals, and wrote, among other works, the first cantos of his Don Juan (1819-1824). This satiric poem is today considered Byron's masterpiece; the first two cantos were widely condemned for immorality when they were published anonymously in 1819.

In Venice Byron met the nineteen year old, and already married, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, moving to Ravenna and becoming her cavalier servente. The Count and Countess eventually separated, and Byron accompanied her to Pisa and later to Genoa. In 1823, Byron gave his support to the Greek Independence movement, and sailed to Greece late in that year. He planned to lead part of an expedition against Lepanto, but died of a fever at Missolonghi on April 19, 1824.